 /  IO-3-33  

What  the 

American  Red  Cross 

Did  to  Help  Save  Italy 

By  PAUL  U.  KELLOGG 

Editor  of  The  Survey 


American  Red  Cross 

WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arcliive 
in  2014 


littps://arcliive.org/cletails/wliatamericanredcOOkell 


What  the  American  Red  Cross  Did 
to  Help  Save  Italy 


By  PAUL  U.  KELLOGG 
Editor  of  The  Survey 


ON  the  hills  bordering  Lake  Garda  to 
the  south,  lies  an  old  battleground 
where  sixty  years  ago  the  French 
Piedmontese  defeated  the  Austrians.  For  a 
month  past,  not  only  French  and  Italian, 
but  British  troops  have  been  streaming 
through  this  region.  They  have  been  re- 
inforcing the  new  front  on  the  line  of  the 
Piave,  where  the  Italian  armies  checked  and 
held  the  invading  Austrians  of  1917,  who 
came  down  late  in  October  driving  before 
them  half  a  million  refugees  from  Friuli  and 
the  Veneto. 

This  reawakening  of  old  echoes  of  gun  fire 
in  the  long  struggle  for  Italian  liberation  had 
its  response  in  the  declaration  of  war  by  the 
Congress  of  the  United  States.  But  there  is 
another  span  of  circumstances  in  which 
America  played  a  more  immediate  part,  from 
Padua  and  Venice  to  the  Sicilies,  in  the 
prompt  dispatch  of  trained  men,  supplies  and 
rolling  stock  from  the  Paris  headquarters  of 
the  American  Red  Cross  Commissioner  to 
Europe. 

For  it  was  on  this  old  battlefield  of  Solfer- 
ino,  that  in  1859  Henri  Dunant,  the  Swiss 
fo-  erunner  of  the  Red  Cross,  went  out  before 
the  heat  of  the  conflict  had  spent  itself,  tend- 
ing the  wounded  who  lay  in  anguish,  without 
water,  or  comfort,  or  medical  aid.  Here  it 
was  that  he  was  fired  with  his  conception  of 
a  non-combatant  service  which  would  be 
respected  by  all  armies.   There  followed  that 

[ 


I 

conference  at  Geneva  in  1864,  which  chose  the 
Swiss  flag,  reversed,  as  its  symbol — a  red 
cross  on  a  white  field — and  laid  the  frame- 
work for  those  international  understandings 
which  are  the  law  for  the  sick  and  wounded, 
for  stretcher  bearer  and  ambulance  man  and 
nurse,  wherever  the  battle  lines  run. 

The  Red  Cross 
Off  to  Italy 

And  within  four  days  after  our  declaration 
of  war  against  Austria,  the  first  section  of 
twenty  cars  of  the  American  Red  Cross 
Ambulance  Corps  for  Italy  traversed  the  old 
battlefield  of  Solferino  on  the  way  to  the 
Piave  front. 

The  Red  Cross  was  even  then  in  the  sixth 
week  of  its  emergent  relief  work  for  Italian 
refugees. 

To  pick  up  our  thread  of  history;  the  ques- 
tion on  which  it  seemed  likely  that  the  Geneva 
conference  of  1864  would  split  was  the  belief 
of  the  European  delegates  that  the  military 
commanders  would  not  brook  the  intrusion  of 
other  than  fighting  men  in  the  midst  of  their 
operations.  An  American,  a  member  of  that 
Voluntary  Sanitary  Commission  which  played 
so  active  a  part  in  all  the  campaigns  of  the 
armies  of  the  North,  carried  the  way  with  his 
testimony  fresh  from  the  battlefields  of  our 
Civil  War. 

In  the  intervening  years,  Americans  pio- 
neered by  employing  the  Red  Cross  organiza- 

] 


tion,  which  sprang  from  the  bloody  slopes  of 
this  Italian  battlefield,  as  our  chief  agency  for 
succor  in  times  of  great  fires,  floods  and  other 
forms  of  internal  disaster.  There  has  been, 
therefore,  a  sense  of  noble  indebtedness, 
nobly  returned,  that  has  entered  these  weeks 
into  the  eager  outreaching  of  civilian  help 
from  the  people  of  the  United  States  to  the 
Italian  people,  sorely  pressed  as  they  are  in 
turning  every  city  and  village  of  the  peninsula 
into  a  haven  of  refuge  for  women  and  children 
rendered  homeless  by  the  invasion. 

Made  American  Aid 
a  Reality 

At  a  time  then,  when  American  participa- 
tion in  the  war  has  been  only  a  phrase  to  the 
mass  of  Italians,  the  American  Red  Cross, 
with  little  more  than  a  corporal's  guard  of 
active  workers,  has  made  American  fellow- 
ship a  reality. 

Before  its  own  permanent  commission  to 
Italy  had  yet  sailed  from  New  York,  the  exist- 
ing organization  in  France,  at  the  very  peak 
of  its  load  of  work  for  American  troops, 
French  troops  and  French  civilians,  was  able 
to  fill  in  the  breach  with  experienced  men; 
open  central  offices  in  Rome  early  in  Novem- 
ber; canvass  the  situation  by  wire  through  the 
American  Embassy  and  Consular  service; 
despatch  an  ambulance  section  and  two 
trains  of  supplies;  make  wholesale  purchases 
in  Italy  (while  these  supplies  were  enroute 
from  France);  wire  money  to  spend  on  the 
spot  to  consuls,  committees  and  local  agen- 
cies (while  these  last  supplies  were  enroute 
from  the  Italian  markets) ;  send  out  north  and 
south  the  nucleus  of  a  field  staflf ;  and  commis- 
sion two  ranking  American  experts  in  emer- 
gency relief  to  make  a  rapid  survey  of  the 
whole  field  as  the  basis  for  a  long  plan  of  help. 

Working  with 
the  Italians 

In  saying  this  much,  we  must  keep  things 
in  perspective.  The  part  which  the  American 
Red  Cross  played  in  these  first  weeks  of 
emergency  must  be  seen  against  the  back- 
ground of  voluntary  efTort  put  forward  by 
Italian  agencies;  the  part  which  these  agen- 
cies have  played  must  be  seen  against  the 

[4 


background  of  government  action — munici- 
pal, provincial,  national  and  the  part  which  all 
together  have  played  must  be  seen  against  the 
tremendous  rush  of  emergent  need. 

The  brunt  of  it  fell  on  the  refugees — they 
bore  it,  hungry,  athirst,  drenched  to  their 
skins,  packed  in  cattle  cars,  or  sleeping  on 
stone  floors  when  better  provision  failed. 
More,  the  excruciating  experience  of  their 
slow  southbound  transport  is  but  the  first 
chapter  in  a  situation,  which  if  we  are  to 
judge  by  the  experience  of  French  and  Belgian 
refugees  of  three  years  ago,  will  tax  the  com- 
petence and  generosity  of  all  the  agencies 
concerned  for  months  to  come. 

The  part  which  the  Red  Cross  has  been  able 
to  play  has  been  larger  and  more  effective 
with  every  day  that  has  passed,  and  not  only 
the  spirit  of  the  doing,  but  the  things  done 
were  made  the  subject,  no  more  than  a  month 
from  the  date  the  Red  Cross  Commissioner 
to  Europe  reached  Rome,  of  appreciative  ref- 
erence by  the  Italian  Premier  in  his  address  at 
the  opening  of  Parliament  early  in  December. 

He  said:  "Our  soul  is  stirred  again  with  ap- 
preciation and  with  admiration  for  the  mag- 
nificent dash  with  which  the  American  Red 
Cross  has  brought  us  powerful  aid  in  our  re- 
cent misfortune.  We  attribute  great  value 
to  the  cooperation  which  will  be  given  us 
against  the  common  enemy  by  the  prodigious 
activity  and  by  the  exuberant  and  consistent 
force  which  are  peculiar  to  the  American 
people." 

Money  Sent 
by  Wire 

Take  a  single  example,  more  dramatic  than 
most,  but  by  no  means  unrepresentative  of 
the  way  Italians  and  Americans  have  breasted 
together  minor  emergencies  as  they  arose. 
The  first  two  Red  Cross  men  reached  Rome  on 
November  5,  and  the  first  step  they  took  was 
to  appropriate  money  to  the  American  Relief 
Clearing  House,  which  enabled  it  to  open  that 
very  night  the  first  of  two  canteens  for  refu- 
gees at  the  railroad  stations  in  Rome.  Inci- 
dentally this  was  four  days  before  Italian 
canteens  were  opened  there. 

At  4  o'clock  one  afternoon,  the  volunteers 
who  manned  the  canteen — American  residents 

] 


in  Rome  who  have  since  become  active  mem- 
bers of  the  Red  Cross  staff — had  a  wire  that 
12,000  southbound  refugees  would  pass 
through  the  Portonaccio  station,  six  or  eight 
miles  out  on  the  Roman  Campagna.  The  first 
train  would  arrive  at  6  o'clock.  The  refugees 
had  been  fed  at  Florence  before  leaving,  ten 
hours  before,  and  had  had  nothing  to  eat 
enroute.  The  Italian  authorities  could  supply 
the  children  with  hot  milk,  the  adults  with 
bread  and  soup.  They  turned  the  rest  over 
to  the  Americans. 

There  was  just  two  hours  leeway.  The  can- 
teen workers  jumped  into  motor  cars.  They 
bought  1,200  blankets,  they  bought  hams, 
they  bought  sausages,  they  bought  chocolate, 
they  piled  them  into  the  cars  and  made  re- 
peated trips  to  the  Termini  station,  where  they 
secured  permission  to  dump  them  into  the 
baggage  car  of  the  Florence  express  which 
left  on  its  northbound  trip  between  5  and  6 
o'clock.  In  this  way  they  had  their  supplies 
out  at  the  Portonaccio  station  before  the 
arrival  of  the  first  refugee  train. 

Soldiers  Making  Sandwiches 

Here  they  found  a  squad  of  the  Granatieri. 
an  Italian  regiment  dating  back  to  the  seven- 
teenth century.  In  the  present  war,  so  heavy 
has  been  their  part  in  the  fighting  that  it  has 
taken  60,000  men  to  keep  filled  their  ranks  of 
6,000.  Tonight  the  Granatieri  were  armed 
with  big  knives  and  from  now  until  9  o'clock 
the  '  ^xt  morning,  when  the  last  train  went 
through,  they  turned  huge  stacks  of  bread 
into  sandwiches,  cutting  the  loaves  into  big 
chunks,  slicing  them,  and  stuffing  them  with 
ham  and  sausage. 

Each  train  carried  about  1,000  refugees, 
and  the  Granatieri  v/ould  no  more  than  get  a 
thousand  sandwiches  made  up  than  a  train 
would  roll  in.  Then  they  had  to  work  against 
time  to  be  ready  for  the  next  train.  And  they 
did  this  for  twelve  solid  hours  and  more,  as 
fast  as  men  could  work. 

Perhaps  in  a  writing  which  cannot  hope  to 
speak  of  the  hundreds  of  Italians  in  all  walks 
of  life  who  have  worked  shoulder  to  shoulder 
with  the  Red  Cross  men,  and  whose  coopera- 
tion has  made  their  work  possible,  it  may  be 
permitted  to  cite  one  as  personifying  many. 


Giorgio  d'Acarnia  is  the  pen  name  of  a  young 
writer  on  the  proposed  Jugo-Slovo  State  and 
the  future  of  Poland.  He  is  known  also  for 
his  ardor  on  a  certain  battlefield,  where  he 
was  left  for  dead  with  a  shrapnel  wound  in  his 
abdomen.  Sometime  later,  stretcher  bearers 
brought  his  body  to  a  field  hospital,  where  the 
physicians  in  charge  said  that  he  was  clearly 
dying. 

They  turned  to  more  hopeful  cases,  and  for 
a  second  time  he  was  left  to  one  side  for  the 
flicker  of  life  in  him  to  snuff  itself  out.  It 
happened  that  Bastianelli,  perhaps  the  great- 
est of  the  Italian  surgeons — and  Italy  is 
famous  for  her  surgeons  in  this  war — came  to 
that  ward.  "His  case  is  hopeless,"  said  Bas- 
tianelli, "none  the  less  I  want  to  try  to  save 
him."  There  followed  the  first  of  four  major 
operations  which  brought  the  young  author- 
soldier  back  to  his  people,  a  shadow  of  him- 
self, with  a  great  open  wound  in  his  side. 
That  was  eight  months  ago.  He  cannot  go 
back  to  the  front,  but  he  still  works  on  for 
Italy.  It  was  Giorgio  d'.^carnia  who  was  in 
command  of  the  Granatieri,  cutting  bread  for 
the  refugees,  train  after  train,  all  that  night. 

Refugees  in  the  Rain 

Pouring  rain  beat  into  the  open  train-shed 
and  through  the  doors  of  the  cars.  Rain  was 
the  one  farriiliar  of  these  contalini  in  all  the 
strange  placesthrough  which  they  were  driven 
by  the  fortunes  of  war.  It  was  pouring  rain 
when  they  struggled  down  the  black  road 
from  Udine.  It  was  pouring  rain  when  many 
of  them  were  put  off  the  trains  into  the  asili 
at  Florence,  just  as  it  was  pouring  rain  when 
they  passed  through  Rome  on  this,  the  next 
lap  of  their  journey.  It  was  pouring  rain 
when  some  of  them  were  transferred  from 
ferry  to  train  at  Messina,  and  they  stood 
waiting  in  the  dark  in  the  drench  of  it  for  two 
hours  on  the  wharves.  And  it  was  pouring 
rain  when  others — or  perhaps  some  of  the 
same  company— trudged  after  midnight  up 
the  interminable  folds  of  road  that  lead  to  the 
mountain  top  town  in  Sicily  that  was  for  a 
thousand  and  more  their  journey's  end. 

They  came  into  Rome  that  night  mostly  on 
cattle  cars,  some  of  these  transformed  for  the 
use  of  war  into  troop  trains,  but  others  clearly 


improvised  for  this  trip,  with  benches  taken 
from  little  northern  schools  and  churches  for 
seats.  The  American  canteen  workers  could 
read  the  names  of  them  in  the  station  lights — 
"Santa  "  this  and  that. 

Most  of  the  people,  those  who  came  in 
around  midnight  and  after,  had  not  eaten  for 
twelve  hours.  The  babies  were  crying,  the 
few  men  that  were  among  them  were  cursing, 
the  women  wringing  their  hands.  The  Ameri- 
cans, drenched  to  the  skin  in  going  from  car 
to  car,  passed  the  sandwiches  out  to  them,  the 
hot  milk  for  the  babies,  the  soup  for  the  adults, 
the  blankets  for  the  old  and  sick.  And  before 
each  train  had  left  the  station,  a  young  Italian 
ofificer,  tall,  slender,  with  a  great  open  wound 
in  his  side  concealed  by  his  grey-green  uni- 
form, went  from  car  to  car,  in  the  rain  and  the 
cold,  inflaming  their  hearts  with  words  of 
encouragement. 

Not  once,  so  the  canteen  workers  tell  the 
story,  but  the  trains  rolled  out  with  the  people 
singing  patriotic  hymns,  and  cheering  for 
Italy,  for  the  Allies,  for  America. 

America  in  Action 

The  American  note  has  been  struck  in  all 
this  Red  Cross  work  in  Italy — not  in  a  spirit 
of  self-advertisement  for  the  United  States, 
but  rather  of  assurance  for  Italians,  to  give 
them  tangible  evidence  that  in  resisting  inva- 
sion and  in  getting  under  its  heavy  load  of 
civilian  distress  the  American  people  are  with 
them,  evidence  not  merely  in  sympathetic 
cables  and  distant  girdings  for  war,  but  evi- 
dence expressed  in  such  humble  but  convinc- 
ing terms  as  surgical  dressings  and  instru- 
ments for  field  and  base  hospitals,  shirts  and 
drawers  and  stockings  for  shivering  limbs  in 
asili  and  refuge  trains,  condensed  milk  for 
hungry  babies,  blankets  and  beds  and  stoves 
for  homeless  families  in  lodgings  in  the  north- 
ern cities,  in  vacant  villas  along  the  seacoast, 
in  country  villages  in  Umbria,  in  old  convents 
and  monasteries  in  the  south. 

There  was  a  very  genuine  statesmanship 
in  the  call  sent  out  for  combs  which  came  from 
a  Red  Cross  worker  in  Leghorn,  and  in  the 
good  sense  of  the  American  women  in  Flor- 
ence who  got  together  and  made  sanitary 
napkins  far  into  the  night.   The  sober  officials 

[6 


of  one  Elyrian  town  were  hopeless  of  provid- 
ing bedding  for  the  10,000  refugees  in  their 
prefecture,  but  in  the  midst  of  their  quandary 
they  sent  two  visiting  Red  Cross  inspectors  on 
their  way  to  a  neighboring  city  in  the  muni- 
cipal motor  car,  the  firemen  in  brass-bound 
helmets  on  the  drivers'  seat,  and  the  siren 
sounding  as  they  scattered  dogs  and  children. 
The  Red  Cross  men  caught  the  spirit  of  the 
new  diplomacy  when  they  sent  the  car  back 
filled  up  with  blankets  from  their  stores  at 
Bologne  from  the  people  of  America  to  the 
people  of  Italy. 

America  Expressing  Itself 

Moreover,  the  President  of  the  United 
States  is  the  head  of  the  Red  Cross;  it  is  a 
semi-official  organization,  and  it  is  quickly 
recognized  in  such  international  work  as  a 
natural  channel  for  American  resourcefulness 
and  good  will.  It  is  hailed  not  only  as  a  piece 
of  American  enterprise,  but  as  America 
expressing  itself.  It  was  in  truth  a  cable  from 
the  American  Ambassador  to  Italy  that 
brought  the  first  Red  Cross  men  to  Rome, 
and  it  was  at  the  American  Embassy  that 
they  met  with  the  committee  of  the  American 
Relief  Clearing  House  and  mapped  out 
together  the  first  steps  to  be  taken. 

Around  Ambassador  Page  all  the  early 
operations  swung,  and  his  penetrating  judg- 
ment of  men,  of  organizations  and  cities;  his 
swift  strokes  in  portraying  the  main  elements 
in  the  situation — his  Southern  talent  for 
establishing  cordial  relations  for  the  new- 
comers with  the  Roman  community  and  the 
forces  of  the  National  Government  gave  an 
unanticipated  speed  and  precision  to  the 
rapidly  expanding  work.  And  it  was  from  the 
Ambassador's  office,  at  that  first  day's  con- 
ference, that  dispatches  went  off  to  American 
Consuls  throughout  Italy  for  information  as 
to  numbers  and  conditions  of  refugees. 

Money  was  sent  that  afternoon  to  Consuls 
in  cities  known  to  have  pressing  need.  Within 
a  week  the  ten  consular  districts  had  become 
in  a  sense  the  natural  framework  for  the 
development  of  the  civilian  work  outside 
Rome,  and  the  Consuls  themselves  the  pio- 
neer American  relief  workers. 

1 


Consuls,  the  Pioneer  Workers 

Their  efforts,  naturally,  took  different 
forms  in  different  districts.  Consul  Carroll, 
at  Venice,  found  that  the  Posto  di  Conforto 
at  Mestre,  which  was  giving  food  and  help 
to  refugees  and  wounded  soldiers,  had  reached 
its  last  day  of  operation  due  to  lack  of  means 
and  arranged  for  its  continuance  under  the 
American  flag. 

Next,  he  opened  a  Red  Cross  canteen  at 
Chioggia,  as  a  first  step  in  cooperating  in  that 
orderly  evacuation  of  Venetian  civilians, 
which  will  be  described  later  and  into  which 
he  threw  himself  with  characteristic  Texan 
energy.  Consul  Dumont  had  enlisted  a  fellow 
countryman  as  the  representative  of  the 
American  colony  in  Florence  in  collecting 
money  and  clothing  for  the  refugees,  the 
Italian  Red  Cross  established  him  as  head  of 
the  clothing  distribution  service  at  the  prin- 
cipal shelter  near  the  station,  and  the  consul 
next  commissioned  him  to  carry  American 
Red  Cross  moneys  to  other  cities  in  the  dis- 
trict. 

Consul  Winship,  of  Milan,  lent  his  experi- 
ence in  Petrograd  in  aiding  Polish  refugees  at 
the  time  of  the  great  Russian  retreat  of  1915. 
He  became  chairman  of  an  active  American 
Red  Cross  committee  made  up  of  American 
business  men,  which  has  opened  a  popular 
kitchen  near  the  station  (where  200  resident 
refugees  are  fed),  turned  a  clubhouse  into  an 
infirmary  and  rest  home  for  women  and  chil- 
dred,  is  equipping  and  managing  a  dormitory 
for  allied  soldiers  and  is  cooperating  with  the 
central  city  committee  in  promoting  better 
housing  and  employment  for  refugees. 

Acting  Consul  Roberts  at  Genoa  cooper- 
ated in  organizing  a  similar  committee  there, 
which  erected  a  chalet  in  the  station,  first  for 
the  service  of  refugees  and  now  for  that  of 
troops  in  transit. 

Consul  Grace  in  Leghorn  organized  the 
distribution  of  clothing,  milk  and  cocoa  at 
two  asili,  sheltering  900  people,  and  by  per- 
sonal inspection  trips  expanded  the  scope  of 
Red  Cross  activities  to  Pisa  and  other  towns 
in  his  district. 

Consul  Haven  at  Turin,  at  the  north; 
Consul  Honey  at  Catania  and  Consul  Sh»nk 


at  Palermo,  at  the  far  south,  gathered  infor- 
mation and  established  connections  for  the 
Red  Cross  representatives  on  their  arrival,  as 
did  Consul  White  in  Naples,  who,  from  the 
first,  was  an  active  participant  in  local  under- 
takings for  the  refugees. 

In  the  course  of  November  460,835  lire 
were  placed  by  the  Red  Cross  in  the  hands  of 
American  consuls  either  for  direct  use  or 
transmission  to  local  agencies  which  their 
activity  had  helped  create  or  their  judgment 
sanctioned. 

Former  Red  Cross  Work 
In  Italy 

This  is  not  the  first  emergency  in  which  the 
American  Red  Cross  and  the  representatives 
of  the  United  States  State  Department  in 
Italy  have  jointly  served  the  purposes  of 
humanity.  At  the  time  of  the  Messina  earth- 
quake the  American  Ambassador,  Mr.  Gris- 
com,  headed  the  American  Red  Cross  com- 
mittee which  handled  a  million  dollars  con- 
tributed for  relief  and  rehabilitation,  and 
constructed  the  American  barrack  villages  at 
Messina  and  Reggio.  The  American  consul 
at  Messina  lost  his  life  in  that  disaster,  and 
the  American  consul  at  Genoa  died  from  the 
results  of  exposure  in  the  course  of  the  relief 
work. 

Regional  Organization 

The  promptness  and  efficiency  of  the  Ameri- 
can consuls  in  the  present  emergency  will 
leave  its  impress  on  the  whole  trend  of  Red 
Cross  development  in  Italy.  It  has  been  a 
factor  in  the  decentralized  scheme  for  civilian 
work  which  the  temporary  staff  will  turn  over 
to  the  permanent  commission.  This  calls  for 
regional  representatives,  responsible  to  and 
receiving  instructions  from  the  headquarters 
in  Rome,  but  capable  of  carrying  a  large 
measure  of  responsibility  and  to  deal  with 
details  under  very  general  instructions. 

In  general,  the  old  regional  divisions  of 
Italy  have  been  followed  as  they  have  been 
combined  in  the  American  consular  districts, 
and  as  these  in  turn  must  be  modified  for  an 
organization  for  relief  rather  than  for  com- 
merce.   The  American  consuls  will  be  recog- 


[7] 


nized  as  bearing  an  advisory  or  honorary 
relation  to  the  work  in  their  districts,  and  their 
cooperation  will  be  enlisted  in  making  con- 
tracts with  local  officials  and  in  matters  in 
which  intimate  knowledge  of  the  community 
will  be  useful. 

The  districts,  as  experimentally  organized, 
follow : 

1.  The  War  Zone,  headquarters  at  Padua. 

2.  Lombardy,  headquarters  at  Milan. 

3.  Piedmont,  headquarters  at  Turin. 

4.  Liguria,  including  the  Mediterranean 
shore  of  Tuscany,  headquarters  in  Genoa. 

5.  Tuscany  and  Emilia,  except  the  two 
coastal  regions,  headquarters  in  Florence. 

6.  Venetian  Colonies  along  the  Adriatic, 
headquarters  in  Rimini. 

7.  Central  Italy  and  Sardinia,  headquar- 
ters in  Rome. 

8.  Campania,  Basilicata  and  Puglia,  head- 
quarters in  Naples. 

9.  Sicily  and   Calabria,  headquarters  in 
Palermo. 

Another  factor  which  made  for  this  decen- 
tralized scheme  of  development,  was  the 
division  of  labor  effected  at  the  outset  with 
the  American  Relief  Clearing  House,  on  the 
presumption  that  the  latter  would  be  merged 
with  the  American  Red  Cross.  The  Clearing 
House  had  been  formed  for  a  very  definite 
purpose,  that  of  organizing  and  transporting 
supplies  for  hospitals. 

When  the  line  gave  way,  it  was  suddenly 
called  on  for  supplies  to  help  care  for  the 
double  stream  of  refugees,  civilians  and 
wounded  soldiers.  ]t  cleared  out  its  ware- 
house the  first  week,  ran  out  of  funds,  and 
wired  to  the  Red  Cross.  The  division  of 
labor  was  simple;  in  relief  work  the  Red  Cross 
was  to  plunge  into  work  in  the  provinces;  the 
Clearing  House,  with  its  conmiittee  of  local 
Americans,  and  with  a  prompt  appropriation 
of  100,000  lire  from  the  Red  Cross,  for  the 
immediate  purchase  of  clothing,  blankets, 
food,  etc.,  was  to  work  in  Rome. 

Working  in  Rome 

Reference  has  already  been  made  to  the 
canteen  the  Clearing  House  opened  at  the 

[8 


Portonaccio  station,  out  on  the  Campagna, 
through  which  the  southbound  stream  of 
refugees  first  passed.  In  little  more  than  a 
week,  lest  refugees  should  congregate  in  great 
numbers  at  the  capital,  the  line  of  transport 
was  switched  to  the  route  south  along  the 
Adriatic,  and  this  canteen  was  transferred 
under  Red  Cross  auspices,  to  Ancona. 

Refugees  assigned  to  Rome,  or  to  be  dis- 
tributed in  the  neighborhood,  came  into  the 
Termini  station.  The  Government  had 
requisitioned  nearby  hotels,  and  gave  them 
a  small  allowance  for  food,  but  they  had  diffi- 
culty in  obtaining  it. 

The  very  first  night,  the  Clearing  House 
Canteen  here  fed  700  persons,  and  in  four 
days  the  number  eating  its  evening  meals  had 
reached  1,200.  The  Giornale  d' Italia,  one  of 
the  leading  newspapers  of  Rome,  had  a  popu- 
lar subscription  going  and  in  conjunction  with 
the  municipal  committee  was  providing 
breakfasts  and,  through  a  ticket  system  good 
at  certain  shops,  giving  out  clothing.  The 
subscription  had  reached  350,000  lire  when, 
that  first  week,  the  American  Red  Cross 
shipped  in  100,000  lire  to  the  fund. 

That — for  such  is  the  psychology  of  news- 
papers and  newspaper  readers  the  world 
over — put  America  "on  the  map"  and  inci- 
dentally jumped  the  subscriptions  from 
Italian  sources  to  many  times  the  Red  Cross 
gift. 

More  Gifts  of  the  Red  Cross 

Two  weeks  later  the  Red  Cross  made  a 
third  and  still  larger  gift  to  Roman  activities — 
one  of  one  million  lire  to  the  Comitato 
Romano  Organizacione  Civile,  which  has 
been  carrying  on  widespread  relief  work  for 
the  benefit  of  soldiers'  families  and  stood 
ready  to  bring  refugee  families  within  the 
scope  of  its  activities. 

These  include  creches  and  maternal 
schools  for  children  whose  mothers  are  at 
work— one  of  them  tucked  picturesquely 
under  the  shadow  of  the  old  wall— an  asylum 
for  children  whose  mothers  are  not  living  and 
whose  fathers  are  at  the  front;  a  workroom, 
employing  four  or  five  hundred  women  on 
tents  and  army  clothing;  popular  kitchens  for 
serving  meals  (many  of  them  free,  on  a 

] 


ticket  system)  and  higher  grade  economic 
kitchens  for  the  distribution  of  cooked  meals 
at  cost  or  less — all  of  them  so  many  points 
of  attack  on  the  problems  of  livelihood  which 
the  war,  the  stopped  earnings  of  the  men,  the 
high  cost  of  living  and  now  the  coming  of  the 
refugees  have  rendered  acute. 

Nothing,  as  the  leaders  in  these  activities 
saw  it,  would  count  for  more  in  maintaining 
morale  at  the  front  than  for  the  men  in  the 
trenches  to  be  sure  that  their  families, 
whether  refugee  or  merely  left  behind,  are 
not  suffering  this  winter. 


II 


Organizing 
Departments 


MEANWHILE  the  work  in  the  pro- 
vinces and  the  organization  of  a 
temporary  headquarters  staff  had 
gone  forward.  Under  a  deputy  commis- 
sioner, who  had  helped  shape  the  development 
of  Red  Cross  work  in  France,  its  three  main 
divisions  were  rapidly  duplicated  here — mili- 
tary affairs,  civil  affairs  and  administration. 

The  military  department  was  put  in  the 
hands  of  an  American  who,  since  the  first 
year  of  the  war,  has  been  one  of  the  seven 
engineers  of  a  medical  supply  service  reaching 
between  three  and  four  thousand  French 
hospitals  and  entering  into  every  sphere  of 
army  activity  from  the  advanced  dressing 
stations  to  sanateria  in  the  south  of  France. 

The  civil  department  was  put  in  the  hands 
of  a  former  member  of  Mr.  Hoover's  staff  in 
Belgium,  now  chief  of  that  bureau  in  the 
French  organization  of  the  Red  Cross  which 
deals  with  relief  and  rehabilitation  in  the  war 
zone.  Stores  and  transportation  were  put  in 
the  hands  of  the  organizer  of  the  Red  Cross 
warehouse  system  in  France;  purchase  in 
those  of  the  Italian  buyer  for  a  large  American 
house  doing  business  throughout  Europe; 
accounting  and  finance  in  the  hands  of  the 
treasurer  of  the  Red  Cross  organization  in 
France,  controller  of  a  New  York  Trust 
Company;  and  general  administration  in 
those  of  a  Detroit  business  man  whose  years 
of  experience  in  the  management  of  chemical 


industries  has  latterly  been  translated  into 
building  up  for  the  Red  Cross  a  supply  and 
furniture-making  center  in  the  heart  of 
devastated  area  recovered  by  the  French 
last  spring. 

Passport,  cable,  railroad,  employment, 
filing  and  other  services  were  rapidly  set  in 
motion  in  offices  in  the  Palazzo  Doria  turned 
over  to  the  Red  Cross  by  the  Banca  Conuiier- 
ciale,  through  an  American  member  of  its 
Board  of  Directors. 

Help  from  Americans 
in  Rome 

Other  Americans  in  Rome  were  quick  to 
volunteer  their  services  and  English  speaking 
Italians  were  equally  cooperative.  Certain 
members  of  the  Clearing  House  Committee 
proved  invaluable  as  traveling  inspectors. 
Within  a  month  a  temporary  staff  of  sixty-five 
people  were  at  work.  This  included  the  dele- 
gates in  the  field,  who  were  mustered  from 
whatever  quarters  they  could  be  obtained 
and  sent  out  as  rapidly  as  they  could  be 
mustered — officers  and  students  of  the 
American  Academy,  the  secretary  of  a  sugar 
company,  a  Pennsylvanian  who  has  been 
farming  it  in  Umbria;  artists,  architects,  men 
of  leisure  from  Florence  and  Sicily,  a  doctor  of 
letters  from  the  Sorbonne,  a  physician,  a 
teacher  of  philosophy  and  one  of  sociology 
from  the  Civil  Affairs  Department  at  Paris,  a 
social  worker  and  a  clergyman  resident  in 
Rome,  a  sanitary  engineer  back  from  Red 
Cross  work  in  the  Balkans,  and  so  on. 

Knowledge  of  Italy  and  Italian,  executive 
experience  and  acquaintance  with  civil  or 
military  relief  work  they  had  in  combination, 
this  scratch  organization,  but  scarcely  one 
of  them  possessed  all  three  qualifications; 
few  two;  yet  they  pitched  in  with  spirit 
and  were  quick  to  respond  to  the  promptings 
of  the  picked  men  sent  out  to  organize  the 
work. 

Early  in  the  first  week,  two  American 
business  men  from  the  industrial  district  in 
Northern  Italy,  met  with  the  Red  Cross  rep- 
resentatives in  Rome  and  together  drafted 
a  scheme  for  a  citizens'  committee  in  Milan. 
That  night  they  left  for  Genoa,  where  they 


[9] 


organized  a  similar  committee  in  the  morning, 
met  with  their  Milan  group  in  the  afternoon, 
and  on  Wednesday,  or  two  days  after  the  Red 
Cross  opened  work  in  Rome,  full-fledged 
American  Red  Cross  committees  were  at 
work  in  these  two  important  northern  centers. 

Program  for 
Civilian  Relief 

Meanwhile  reports  were  coming  in  by  wire 
and  letter  from  the  consuls,  asking  for  money; 
saying  how  they  could  use  it,  showing  the 
need  for  personnel.  On  the  civilian  relief 
with  a  staff  to  be  created  out  of  thin  air,  with 
the  railroads  congested  and  with  no  man 
knowing  how  long  the  stream  of  refugees 
would  keep  up,  the  administrative  problem 
was  one  of  limiting  effort. 

The  director  of  civilian  relief  got  down  a 
railroad  map  and  built  his  early  programme 
on  the  transportation  centers  in  that  belt 
through  which  the  stream  was  flowing  south 
and  west — Genoa,  Milan,  Florence,  Bologna, 
and  after  them,  Rome,  Ancona  and  Naples. 
He  decided  to  limit  the  civilian  work  to 
emergency  relief  to  what  could  be  carried  on 
at  the  stations,  and  not  to  attempt  anything 
with  respect  to  the  care  and  lodgment  of 
refugees  at  the  points  of  settlement  until 
their  needs  in  transit  had  lifted.  Moreover  he 
ranked  the  wants  of  the  spirit  quite  as  real  as 
those  of  the  body,  and  the  railroad  stations 
offered  vantage  ground  from  which  to  fly  the 
Stars  and  Stripes  and  Red  Cross  flags  and 
show  that  Americans  were  here  and  helping. 

At  the  end  of  two  weeks,  the  director  could 
report  that  teams  of  Red  Cross  workers  had 
established  soup  kitchens  at  or  near  the  sta- 
tions in  Rome,  Ancona,  Genoa  and  Milan; 
that  the  Red  Cross  had  sent  clothing  and 
bedding  for  refugees  to  Florence,  Leghorn, 
Ancona,  Catania,  Genoa,  Bologna,  Ravenna 
and  Naples;  that  it  had  contributed  funds  for 
the  purchase  of  clothing  to  local  committees 
of  the  Italian  Red  Cross  at  Florence,  Bologna, 
Ancona,  Genoa,  Naples,  Palermo  and  Bari; 
that  it  had  provided  funds  for  relief  work  to 
American  consuls  at  Florence,  Venice,  Milan, 
Genoa,  Leghorn  and  Catania;  that  in  addi- 
tion to  the  large  gifts  mentioned  earlier,  it 
had  authorized  the  equipment  and  mainten- 


ance of  a  150-bed  refuge  home  in  Milan  and  a 
chalet  at  the  railway  station  in  Genoa,  organ- 
ized committees  as  noted  at  those  two  cities 
and  established  resident  delegates  in  Florence, 
Bologna,  Ancona,  Milan,  Rome  and  Naples. 

Shipments  of  Money 
and  Supplies 

The  following  shipments  of  moneys  or  sup- 
plies to  three  cities  will  illustrate  the  type  of 
help  that  was  going  out  from  Red  Cross  head- 
quarters up  to  December  1. 
To  Ancona: 

November  10,  Lire  5,000  for  refugee  cloth- 
ing. 

November  12,  100  cases  condensed  milk. 
November    14,    Lire   5,000    for  refugee 
clothing. 

November  15,  Lire  2,000  for  refugee 
clothing. 

November  20,  100  cases  condensed  milk; 
Lire  5,000  for  refugee  food. 

November  21,  1,395  blankets,  25  mattresses 
To  Florence: 

November  9,  Lire  50,000  for  refugee, 
clothing. 

November  10,  Lire  10,000  for  refugee 
clothing. 

November  20,  502  mattresses,  1,000  blan- 
kets; Lire  100,000  for  refugee  relief. 

November  27,  3  flags. 

November  29,  17,262  articles  of  clothing. 

November  30,  Lire  25,000  for  relief. 
To  Leghorn: 

November  10,  1,190  articles  clothing;  2,000 
blankets.  Lire  50,000  for  refugee  relief. 

November  12,  100  cases  condensed  milk. 

November  20,  100  cases  condensed  milk. 

November  24,  16,996  articles  clothing; 
1,007  blankets. 

November  26,  Lire  18,000  for  purchase  of 
blankets. 

By  the  first  week  in  December,  the  stream 
of  refugees,  which  had  been  dwindling,  prac- 
tically stopped;  but  with  no  certainty  as  to 
when  it  might  come  again  in  flood,  provision 
for  refugees  in  passage  and  in  the  larger  cities 
continued  for  ten  days  longer  as  the  major 


110] 


concern  at  headquarters.  At  the  same  time, 
as  public  attention  in  the  large  cities  shifted 
from  the  needs  of  those  passing  through  to 
those  who  were  to  remain,  as  the  refugees 
were  spread  out  in  every  province  from  the 
provincial  centers  to  the  smaller  places,  and 
as  the  great  residue  was  shipped  and  settled 
in  the  south,  clothing  appeals  began  to  reach 
the  Red  Cross  from  all  directions  and  the 
questions  of  hospital  provision,  of  shelter  and 
employment  pressed  in  in  countless  local 
embodiments. 

Survey  of 
Relief  Needs 

This  had  not  been  unanticipated,  and  on 
November  20  the  Commissioner  for  Europe 
had  despatched  a  committee  of  three  to  make 
a  quick  survey  of  relief  needs  throughout 
Italy,  as  a  basis  for  permanent  organization 
and  program. 

Here  again  the  resources  of  the  Red  Cross 
organization  in  France  and  Belgium  were 
drawn  on,  the  senior  members  of  the  commit- 
tee being  the  two  executives  and  social 
workers  who  set  the  standards  for  American 
emergency  relief  in  the  San  Francisco  and 
Ohio  flood  disasters,  one  of  them  now  chief 
of  the  Bureau  of  Refugees  in  the  Department 
of  Civil  Affairs,  at  Paris;  the  other  the  direc- 
tor of  the  Red  Cross  Department  for  Belgium. 

The  committee  visited  Venice,  Vicenza, 
Padua,  Verona,  Milan,  Turin,  Genoa,  Mo- 
dena,  Rimini  and  Florence  in  the  north; 
Naples,  Messina,  Palermo  and  Catania  in  the 
south;  spending  ten  days  on  the  north  trip 
and  five  days  in  the  south,  inspecting  asili, 
kitchens,  lodgings,  work  rooms;  interviewing 
members  of  the  cabinet,  prefects,  mayors, 
relief-workers,  bishops,  generals,  consuls, 
physicians — all  that  personnel  which,  because 
of  official  duty  or  private  good  will,  or  both, 
had  been  thrown  in  contact  with  the  south- 
bound stream  of  fugitives  or  were  facing  with 
them  the  immediate  problem  of  taking  up 
the  burden  of  life  in  their  new  surroundings. 

A  Record  in 
Human  Help 

Perhaps  no  such  mission  for  human  help 
has  ever  seen  the  duplicate  of  this,  from  the 


half  deserted  quays  of  N'enice  to  the  cluttered 
tenement  streets  of  Naples,  from  the  low 
farms  back  of  the  armed  banks  of  the  Piave 
to  old  monasteries  turned  refuges  on  a  Sicilian 
mountain  top.  But  rapid  as  the  trip  was,  and 
picturesque,  its  distinction  lay  in  that  com- 
bination of  investigation  and  action  on  the 
spot  which  has  been  characteristic  of  Red 
Cross  development  in  France  since  last  June. 

The  committee  carried  with  them  over 
500,000  lire.  It  put  sufficient  money  in  the 
hands  of  Consul  Carroll  to  enable  him  to  con- 
tribute in  a  large  way  to  the  orderly  evacua- 
tion of  Venice;  contributed  to  the  emergency 
relief  fund  needed  to  tide  over  an  unemploy- 
ment crisis  in  Padua,  from  which  city  various 
industries  had  been  removed,  gave  quick  help 
to  a  provincial  committee  at  Vicenza  which 
was  caring  for  a  large  number  of  destitute 
mountain  folk  who  had  come  down  to  the 
neighboring  farms;  turned  over  a  sufficient 
sum  to  the  American  Red  Cross  Committee 
in  Milan  to  enable  it  to  work  out  a  general 
program,  founded  a  Red  Cross  hospital  and 
health  center  among  the  new  Venetian 
colonies  at  Rimini;  made  a  gift  to  the  Italian 
Red  Cross  at  Catania  to  enable  it  to  succor 
refugees  destitute  of  clothing  and  bedding  in 
the  small  Sicilian  villages,  and  left  working 
funds  at  Naples  and  Palermo  to  promote 
better  lodgings  and  employment  for  refugees. 

On  December  8  the  committee  submitted 
its  report,  giving  in  brief  compass,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  new  commission,  a  general 
survey  of  conditions,  the  urgency  of  needs 
scarcely  less  bitter  than  those  of  the  refugees 
in  transit,  and  the  constructive  lines  of  work 
which,  on  the  basis  of  experience  in  France 
and  Belgium,  might  stave  off  and  prevent 
some  of  those  persisting  ills  which  beset 
fugitives  even  among  their  own  people.  Of 
these  more  later. 

Italy's  Disaster 
and  Her  Hospitals 

There  has  been  one  sweeping  challenge  for 
help  in  the  Italian  experience  this  fall  which 
had  no  counterpart  when  France  was  invaded 
in  1914.  The  French  retreat  had  no  such 
wreckage  of  hospital  equipment,  for  such 
equipment  did  not  exist,  nor  was  there  a 


[11] 


great  hospital  population  of  wounded  men  in 
the  area  swept  over. 

The  Italians  had  put  their  hospitals  well  up 
behind  the  line,  with  no  thought  of  a  break. 
They  managed  to  get  out  many  patients — 
how  many  is  not  stated.  Roads  were  so 
choked  that  ambulances,  like  other  lighter 
vehicles,  could  not  take  advantage  of  their 
speed  and  get  away.  Stories  are  told  of  men 
with  leg  wounds  who  tramped  fifteen  kilo- 
meters, of  wounded  men  riding  astride  the 
retreating  guns,  of  an  orderly  who  got  a 
typhoid  patient  out  on  his  back,  and  so  on. 

But  at  thisdatea  general  idea  of  the  supreme 
effort  exerted  by  the  Italian  Sanita  Militare 
and  the  Italian  Red  Cross  to  care  for  the 
wounded  back  of  the  new  front,  and  of  the 
need  for  unstinted  help  from  America,  can 
be  conveyed  only  by  rough  estimates  of  the 
losses  in  equipment.  These  are  placed  at  not 
less  than  100  hospitals  and  two  of  the  princi- 
pal magazines  of  hospital  supplies.  They  lost 
all  their  first  and  second  line  base  hospitals  in 
the  sector  through  which  the  retreat  ran  and 
about  a  quarter  in  the  adjoining  sector.  Alto- 
gether they  lost  between  a  third  and  a  half, 
nearer  a  half  than  a  third,  of  their  medical 
equipment  in  the  army  zone. 

The  tenacious  Italian  habit  of  holding 
things  in  reserve  has  been  the  subject  of 
frequent  comment  in  connection  with  vol- 
cano and  earthquake  disasters  in  the  past. 
As  a  matter  of  whimsical  interest,  some  of  the 
goods  sent  by  the  American  Red  Cross  at  the 
time  of  the  Messina  earthquake  were  dis- 
tributed this  last  month  to  refugees  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Catania.  This  habit  stood 
the  nation  in  good  stead  in  the  present  crisis, 
for  its  reserves  in  medical  supplies  have  been 
sufficient  to  make  good  the  gaps.  This,  how- 
ever, leaves  them  depleted,  and  to  make  good 
these  reserves  and  build  up  new  equipment 
was  the  immediate  need. 

Here  it  is  in  point  to  mention  the  excellent 
use  the  Italian  Sanitary  Service  made  in  the 
emergency  of  the  million  lire  left  in  its  hands 
by  the  American  Red  Cross  Commission 
which  visited  Italy  in  August.  This  sum, 
following  the  national  bent,  had  been  kept 
unspent.  It  was  at  once  devoted  to  making 
good  losses  in  important  and  costly  medical 
installations. 


And  here  should  be  mentioned  the  prompt 
help  offered  by  the  American  Poet's  Ambu- 
lance, which  was  organized  in  early  Septem- 
ber, and  which  had  orders  placed  in  Italy  in 
the  early  fall  enabling  it  to  put  fi\  e  barrack 
hospitals  and  thirty  tent  hospitals  in  the 
hands  of  the  Intendonza  for  immediate 
service  when  the  Italian  line  fell  back  to  the 
Piave. 

It  thus  got  American  help  through  in  the 
earliest  crucial  days,  and  as  we  shall  see, 
thereafter  enabled  the  Red  Cross  to  carry  out 
a  demonstration  in  the  field  of  ambulance 
service  on  a  scale  and  with  a  speed  which 
would  have  been  otherwise  impossible. 

Italy's  Medical 
Service 

Each  nation  at  war  has  had  a  distinctive 
development  of  its  army  medical  system,  and 
the  Italians  who  have  had  to  carry  wounded 
by  aerial  railways  and  mule-back  in  their 
mountain  fighting,  and  who  have  hewn 
dressing  stations  out  of  solid  rock  on  the  high 
peaks,  have  shown  originality  in  the  develop- 
ment of  their  medical  service  throughout. 

To  work  helpfully,  as  well  as  promptly,  the 
director  of  military  affairs  of  the  American 
Red  Cross,  as  soon  as  he  reached  Italy,  set 
out  to  learn  the  general  characteristics  of  the 
Italian  hospital  units  and  to  concentrate  on 
them,  to  find  the  particular  needs  created  by 
the  crisis  and  to  make  immediate  purchase  of 
instruments  and  supplies  which  he  knew  from 
experience  in  France  would  be  called  for. 

The  Clearing  House  had  practically 
emptied  its  medical  stores.  Swift  purchases 
were  made  of  bedding  for  3,000  beds- 
mattresses,  sheets,  pillows,  blankets— and 
such  smaller  instruments  and  rubber  goods 
as  could  be  picked  up  in  Rome,  in  view  of  the 
heavy  purchases  by  the  army  and  the  Italian 
Red  Cross. 

The  urgency  of  the  need  was  illustrated  in 
a  third  line  base  hospital  visited  in  mid 
November.  This  was  of  SCO  beds  and  housed 
in  a  chateau.  Normally  it  had  been  handling 
a  flow  of  25  to  40  incoming  patients  a  day  and 
caring  for  them  from  a  week  to  four  or  five 
months.  This  had  been  transformed  in  the 
emergency  into  what  the  French  call  an 


[12] 


evacuation  hospital,  and  big  trucks  were 
coming  in  with  twelve  to  sixteen  wounded  in 
each,  at  an  interval  of  three  minutes  and  a 
half.  They  were  handling  a  current  of  600 
patients  a  day  and  of  course  the  equipment 
was  tragically  inadequate. 

Eight  days  later,  complete  new  equipment 
for  half  their  beds  and  such  surgical  instru- 
ments as  could  be  had,  left  the  Red  Cross 
headquarters  in  Rome  for  this  hospital. 

Italian  Hospitals 
Stripped 

But,  in  general,  the  hospitals  back  of  the 
new  front,  in  order  to  salvage  any  possible 
further  losses,  were  being  stripped  of  beds  and 
blankets,  and  the  patients  were  lying  on 
mattresses.  Obviously,  in  such  a  situation, 
the  part  of  the  Red  Cross  was  not  to  attempt 
to  replace  things  for  the  moment  in  individual 
hospitals,  but  to  give  to  the  central  authori- 
ties who  could  place  supplies  where  they 
could  use  them  best. 

A  lump  gift  of  175,000  lire  worth  of  sup- 
plies was  ordered  for  the  Sanita  Militare — 
disinfecting  wagons,  auto-claves  for  steriliz- 
ing dressings,  surgical  sets,  500  complete  beds, 
quantities  of  gauze,  cotton,  drugs,  iodine, 
anaesthetics,  etc. 

Plans  thereafter  rapidly  took  shape  for  a 
very  considerable  gift  of  ten  complete  field 
hospitals — one  direct  to  the  Sanita  Militare 
and  nine  through  the  Italian  Red  Cross,  the 
first  to  be  delivered  by  mid  January.  Each 
will  consist  of  50  beds,  with  an  overload 
capacity  of  150,  or  even  of  350.  They  will 
fly  the  American  Red  Cross  and  the  Italian 
flags.  Some  will  be  tent  hospitals,  others 
with  tents  merely  for  the  special  uses,  the 
wards  being  farm  buildings  or  other  shelters 
requisitioned  for  the  purpose,  as  is  the 
Italian  custom. 

Aided  by 
Volunteers 

The  distinctive  feature  of  the  Hospital 
Supply  Service  in  France,  as  it  was  developed 
in  the  early  years  of  the  war  by  the  American 
Distributing  Service  and  as  it  has  been  ex- 
panded under  the  American  Red  Cross  in  the 
last  six  months  has  been  a  corps  of  voluntary 


inspectors  operating  in  conjunction  with  an 
independent  stores  centre.  From  this  in- 
formally and  directly,  the  surgeons  in  charge 
would  receive  prompt  consignment  of  sup- 
plementary supplies  which  because  of  routine 
delays  in  government  material  are  slow  in 
reaching  them,  needed  equipment,  drugs  out- 
side the  army  lists,  or  exceptional  instru- 
ments. 

There  has  been  no  corresponding  society 
in  Italy  for  distributing  hospital  supplies.  A 
semi-military  bureau,  under  the  Quarter- 
masters' Department,  known  as  the  Uflicio 
Doni,  has  acted  as  intermediary  between 
private  donors  and  the  army.  The  American 
Red  Cross  has  established  relations  with  the 
supreme  command,  which  permit  of  develop- 
ing a  group  of  volunteer  inspectors  and  a 
shipping  system  along  the  lines  of  the  service 
in  France,  bringing  the  Red  Cross  into  direct 
contact  with  the  hospitals  and  the  patients 
in  them  so  as  to  make  the  help  from  America 
self-revealing  and  thus  bring  out  the  oral  and 
sentimental  values  inherent  in  it. 

Deliveries  of 
Hospital  Supplies 

On  November  30,  the  hospital  supply  ware- 
house had  been  open  three  weeks  and  even 
without  its  permanent  organization  the  show- 
ing of  deliveries  to  individual  hospitals  had 
been  striking. 

No  less  than  19,000  articles  had  gone  out. 
These  went  to  hospitals  all  over  the  country 
through  which  the  service  got  in  touch 
through  the  reports  of  the  Red  Cross  com- 
mission of  last  summer,  through  the  Clearing 
House,  through  the  visits  of  members  of  the 
staff  of  the  Military  Affairs  Department,  and 
as  result  of  inspections  made  by  the  head  of 
Medical  and  Surgical  Division  of  the  Military 
Affairs  Department  of  the  Red  Cross  in 
France,  who  in  early  November  made  a  tour 
covering  many  points  in  northern  Italy,  re- 
porting to  the  Commissioner  for  Europe. 

Hospital  supplies  shipped  from  Red  Cross 
stores  in  France,  no  less  than  purchases  in 
Italy,  made  this  emergent  work  possible,  and 
for  the  winter's  needs,  750  tons  of  hospital 
supplies  have  been  ordered  in  America  for 
immediate  delivery. 

13] 


These  include  anaesthetics  (some  Italian 
hospitals  have  been  performing  minor  opera- 
tions without  them),  surgical  instruments, 
rubber  goods,  enamel  ware,  gauze,  absorbent 
cotton  and  drugs.  Just  what  such  a  ship- 
ment means  is  difficult  for  a  layman  to  grasp. 

The  quantities  would  leave  a  druggist 
gasping.  For  example,  the  order  includes  250 
pounds  of  quinine.  Since  the  war  quinine  has 
been  difficult  to  get  at  any  price  and  the  price 
has  jumped  from  12  to  16  francs  a  pound  in 
France  to  400  francs.  Quinine  is  badly 
needed  in  Italy,  and  such  a  Red  Cross  con- 
signment would  be  nothing  short  of  a  boon. 

Other  items  which  give  a  better  idea  in 
terms  of  the  things  which  mean  most  to  the 
wounded,  are  fifteen  tons  of  chloroform  and 
25  tons  of  ether.  These  again  are  beyond  the 
layman  to  visualize.  He  can  come  nearer  to 
picturing  2,000  bales  of  absorbent  cotton — the 
item  asked  for. 

Workrooms 
in  Rome 

Back  of  this  service,  and  supplying  it  with 
hospital  apparel,  will  be  a  system  of  work- 
rooms in  Rome,  the  organization  of  which  has 
already  gone  forward.  In  the  early  days  of 
the  war  numerous  centres  of  this  sort  were 
started  in  Rome,  four  of  tliem  in  the  hands  of 
American  women  married  to  Italians. 

Moreover,  the  official  residence  of  the 
American  Ambassador  in  the  Palazzo  Drago 
has  been  a  redoubtable  centre  of  activity 
under  Mrs.  Page,  with  its  guest  room  stacked 
high  with  boltsof  cloth  and  finished  garments. 
These  fair  owners  have  all  been  enlisted  in  a 
common  enterprise,  in  which  the  Red  Cross 
will  maintain  central  cutting  agencies,  supply 
the  materials  and  wages  for  the  soldiers' 
wives  and  refugee  women  employed,  the  Red 
Cross  taking  over  and  distributing  the  output; 
hospital  supplies  and  undergarments  for  its 
medical  and  relief  bureaus. 

Paralleling  the  distribution  service  for 
hospital  supplies  in  France  has  been  that  for 
surgical  dressings,  as  developed  by  the 
Surgical  Dressings  Committee  of  America. 
Here  a  beginning  was  already  under  way,  for 
the  American  social  worker  who  founded  the 
French  work  had,  in  September,  started 
similar  workrooms  in  Rome,  which  by  Novem- 


ber were  turning  out  30,000  dressings  a  week. 
The  Red  Cross  agreed  to  back  them  up  to 
put  out  a  million  dressings  by  January  1, 
and  a  second  million  by  January  15,  and 
with  work-rooms  already  employing  200 
women,  volunteers  and  paid,  the  dressings 
will  be  ready  for  delivery  through  the  hospitals 
supply  service  of  the  Red  Cross. 

Improving  Hospital 
Practice 

Not  only  will  these  dressings  help  fill  the 
gap  due  to  lost  supplies,  but  they  will  open 
up  a  new  standard  of  practice  in  Italian 
hospitals,  which  have  been  in  the  habit  of 
receiving  gauze,  linen,  etc.,  and  making  up 
dressings  in  the  hospitals,  with  result  that 
nurses  were  at  work  in  the  wards  all  day. 
Many  spend  half  the  night  rolling  bandages. 

On  the  other  hand  the  American  innovators 
have  found  another  practice  in  vogue  in  the 
Italian  hospitals  (as  it  is  in  the  American 
Ambulance  Hospital  at  Neuilly),  which  they 
feel  might  well  be  copied  on  other  fronts. 
This  is  to  wash  dressings  and  to  use  them  over 
again.  One  hospital  in  Rome  even  washes 
and  sterilizes  its  raw  cotton  in  this  way,  with 
economy  and  good  results. 

In  conjunction  with  these  activities,  engag- 
ing the  time  and  energies  of  women  of  all 
social  groups,  another  development  shoulc^be 
set  down — the  organization  of  an  informal 
auxiliary  committee  of  Italian  women  by  two 
leaders  in  the  development  of  the  Women's 
War  Relief  Corps  of  the  American  Red  Cross 
in  Paris,  who  came  on  to  Rome  for  this  mis- 
sion. The  members  of  the  Rome  group  in 
turn  undertook  to  enlist  two  fellow-country- 
men in  each  of  the  Italian  cities  as  a  nucleus 
to  build  on  in  the  development  of  any  phases 
of  Red  Cross  work  in  which  such  Italian 
allies  would  be  of  help. 

Ill 

Gift  of  Three 
Ambulance  Sections 

THE  outstanding  event  in  the  military 
side  of  the  Red  Cross  work  in  Italy 
has  yet  to  be  set  down — the  turning 
over  to  the  Italian  Medical  Service  of  the 


[14] 


Third  Army,  five  weeks  after  the  Red  Cross 
reached  Rome  and  less  than  five  days  after 
the  United  States  declared  war  against  Aus- 
tria, of  three  complete  ambulance  sections. 
Each  section  is  made  up  of  20  ambulances,  a 
staff  car,  a  kitchen  trailer,  a  motorcycle  and 
two  camions.  Each  section  comprises  3H 
men,  veterans  of  the  Norton-Harjes  and 
American  Field  Service  in  France,  who  come 
in  as  volunteers  with  the  rank  of  commis- 
sioned officers. 

The  nucleus  of  this  service  was  a  fleet  of 
something  over  20  cars,  which  left  Paris  on 
November  18,  and  did  not  reach  Milan  until 
December  8.  They  came  by  a  long  route 
through  Marseilles  and  Ventimiglia.  Some 
day,  in  lighter  times,  the  full  epic  of  their 
transit  will  be  written.  They  were  the 
recipients  of  demonstrations  in  Marseilles 
and  other  French  and  Italian  cities. 

But  ambulances  are  scarce  in  France; 
these  were  veterans  no  less  than  their  drivers, 
and  had  pounded  over  shell-torn  roads  all 
the  way  from  the  British  sectors  to  Verdun. 
Cars  chose  the  south  of  France  to  go  on  re- 
pose or  permanent  sick  leave,  and  only  12 
came  through  to  Milan  in  shape  to  be  of  use. 
But  here  they  were  met  by  new  recruits,  50 
Fords,  the  gift  of  the  Red  Cross  of  the 
American  Poets  Ambulance,  which,  with 
active  members  both  in  Italy  and  the  United 
States,  had  made  a  still  earlier  gift  of  another 
50  ambulances  direct  to  the  Italian  army. 
These  had  gone  into  first-line  service  between 
November  1  and  20. 

Poets-Red  Cross 
Section 

The  presentation  of  the  combined  Poets- 
Red  Cross  section  took  place  on  December  13 
in  the  yard  of  an  old  Milan  palace  used  by  the 
military  as  a  garage.  Crossed  Italian  and 
American  flags  decked  the  walls  of  the  ancient 
quadrangle.  The  cars  of  the  first  two  sec- 
tions, 40  of  them,  were  arranged  in  a  horse- 
shoe, with  the  camions  in  the  middle,  before 
a  raised  platform  at  one  end. 

Here  were  the  prefects  of  the  province  and 
the  Sindace  of  Milan,  the  Colonel  of  the 
Sanita  Militare  and  the  representative  of  the 
French    Mission,    the   commander   of  the 


British  flying  corps,  the  president  of  the  local 
Italian  Red  Cross  and  the  American  consul, 
chairman  of  the  American  Red  Cross  com- 
mittee of  Milan.  More  important  here  were 
the  100  members  of  the  American  Red  Cross 
Ambulance  Corps  for  Italy,  in  khaki,  six  of 
them  wearing  Croix  de  Guerre,  standing  at 
salute  as  a  bugle  sounded,  and  the  general 
sent  to  receive  them  in  the  name  of  the 
Third  Army  swung  into  the  yard  with  a 
bodyguard  of  plumed  Bersaglieri. 

The  presentation  was  made  by  the  acting 
director  general  of  the  Red  Cross  in  Italy, 
who  pointed  out  that  they  were  the  first 
American  units  to  reach  the  Italian  front; 
that  they  had  volunteered  for  the  service  in 
Italy,  and  that  it  was  a  service  in  a  war 
against  a  common  enemy.  The  general 
responded  in  kind,  and  the  French  com- 
mander introduced  him  to  the  ambulance 
men  who  had  won  the  war  cross  for  acts  of 
bravery  in  caring  for  the  wounded  in  France. 

An  hour  later  the  first  section  left  the  yard 
with  American  flags  flying.  They  drew  up  in 
the  Piazza  de  Duomo,  where  the  Mayor  of 
Milan  bid  them  farewell.  It  was  a  gala  day 
in  the  city.  Square  and  streets  were  thronged 
with  crowds  that  did  not  stop  to  ask  by  what 
magic  carpets  the  "Americana"  had  been 
whisked  in  four  days'  time  to  the  doors  of  the 
old  Gothic  Cathedral,  but  accepted  them  for 
a  fact  bound  up  in  one  determination  of  war, 
and  cheered  them  unremittingly  until  they 
had  streamed  through  the  city  gate  that  led 
off  to  the  old  battle-ground  of  Solferino  on 
the  way  to  the  Piave  front. 

The  second  and  third  sections  followed 
during  the  succeeding  fortnight,  and  the  Red 
Cross  is  under  commitment  to  bring  the 
corps  to  a  total  of  200  cars. 

Working  with 
the  Army 

In  the  face  of  the  staggering  need  for 
hospital  supplies  and  equipment,  those  things 
were  the  first  concern  of  the  Red  Cross  men  in 
Italy  charged  with  laying  the  groundwork  for 
a  Military  Affairs  Department;  but  beginning 
had  been  made  in  two  other  directions,  follow- 
ing precedents  established  in  France,  in  gift 


and  canteen  work  for  the  men  in  the  field  and 
cnroiite  to  and  from  their  homes. 

Here  it  may  be  permitted  again  to  depart 
from  the  rule  of  this  writing  and  mention  by 
name.  Recall,  if  you  will,  the  bold  signatures 
that,  in  the  school  histories  stand  below  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  and  among 
them,  so  that  there  might  be  no  mistaking 
who  was  putting  his  head  in  the  halter, 
Charles  Carroll  of  Carrollton.  That  same 
name,  so  signed,  is  the  one  appended  to  Red 
Cross  field  reports  from  the  Piave  front  in 
mid-November.  No  lean,  cantankerous  rebel 
is  its  present-day  bearer,  but  a  well-known 
member  of  the  American  colony  in  Paris,  no 
longer  young,  the  owner  of  a  stud  farm. 
None  of  the  three  figures  in  the  familiar 
picture  of  the  Spirit  of  70  suggests  him,  but 
their  spirit  is  his,  and  at  Montello,  Nervesa 
and  San  Donna  di  Piave,  through  mud  and 
under  shell  fire,  he  skirted  the  trenches  and 
the  parapet  river  bank. 

He  accompanied  the  lad  of  the  Opera 
Federale  d'Assistenze  e  Propagande  Nazion- 
ale,  who  spoke  with  every  man  they  passed 
and  addressed  knots  of  them.  If  two  tons  of 
chocolate  and  a  scattered  fire  of  cigarettes  and 
mufflers  could  have  routed  the  enemy,  he 
would  have  long  since  been  back  at  the 
Isonzo;  but  these  things  at  least  put  in  a  war- 
time vernacular,  understandable  across  bar- 
riers of  language  and  distance,  the  fact  that 
Americans  were  coming  to  Italy  to  help. 

Need  for  a 
Million  Blankets 

Those  physical  needs  of  the  Italian  troops, 
which  mean  the  difference  between  sickness 
and  health,  reach,  of  course,  much  deeper. 
When  the  line  was  solid  the  soldiers  had  built 
winter  quarters  and  had  gathered  wood  to 
heat  them.  Now  they  have  lost  these 
shelters,  and  have  little  wood  to  warm  their 
improvised  dugouts.  It  is  estimated  that 
three  times  as  many  blankets  will  be  needed 
to  prevent  suffering  this  winter;  blankets  are 
all  but  unpurchasable  in  Italy,  and  the 
Italian  Red  Cross  has  started  a  house-to- 
house  collection  throughout  all  Italy  to  get 
together  a  million  blankets. 

Back  in  August  an  investigator  of  the 

1 


American  Relief  Clearing  House,  who  made 
a  tour  of  inspection  in  advance  of  the 
coming  of  the  first  Red  Cross  commission, 
wrote  as  follows: 

"The  material  aid  which  we  might  render 
to  the  Italian  soldiers  at  the  front  is  covered 
pretty  fully  in  the  word  'wool.'  The  Italian 
Government  does  not  provide  the  greater  part 
of  the  woolen  garments  which  are  needed  on 
all  the  fronts  during  the  winter  and  on  the 
high  mountain  positions  the  year  round.  It 
provides  woolen  undershirts,  but  has  ceased 
to  provide  underwear,  and  it  provides  woolen 
socks,  but  not  in  numbers  adequate  to  the 
need,  seeing  that  they  are  so  soon  worn  out. 
To  the  bounty  of  the  civil  population  is  left 
the  provision  of  supplementary  socks,  and  all 
of  the  footless  long  stockings,  mittens,  neck- 
scarfs,  helmets  and  sweaters  never  have  been 
adequately  supplied." 

There  is  a  dearth  of  wool  in  Italy,  and  this 
condition  has  been  accentuated  by  the  events 
of  the  past  three  months,  as  evidenced  by  the 
condition  in  some  of  the  hospitals  which  has 
come  to  the  knowledge  of  the  Red  Cross, 
where  wounded  soldiers  and  convalescents 
have  been  quite  without  woolen  underwear. 

If  wool  can  be  brought  from  America — 
yarn  and  cloth — and  made  up  in  workrooms, 
giving  employment  to  soldiers'  wives  and 
refugees,  it  will  prevent  a  repetition  along  the 
Piave  of  experiences  bordering  on  those  at 
Valley  Forge,  and  at  the  same  time  give  oc- 
cupation and  earnings  to  thousands  of  needy 
families. 

For  Recreation 
and  Refreshment 

Equally  real  was  the  need  pointed  out  in 
the  report  referred  to  for  the  development  of 
recreation  and  refreshment  activities,  both  at 
the  front  and  along  the  lines  of  communica- 
tion. Several  commanders  were  quoted  as 
regretting  that  "the  soldiers  are  given  only 
fifteen  days'  leave  in  the  course  of  the  year, 
which  is  made  almost  abhorrent  to  them  by 
the  long  rides  in  the  cattle  cars  of  a  convoyed 
train,  which  may  take  them  as  many  as  four 
days  to  bring  them  from  the  front  to  Rome, 
and  that  little  rest  and  almost  no  recreation 

>] 


is  given  them  when  they  return  after  a  month 
of  duty  in  the  front  line  positions." 

Several  commanders  had  built  Case  del 
soldate  (recreation  barracks),  but,  even  be- 
fore the  retreat,  these  were  inadequate  in 
numbers,  in  equipment  and  supervision,  and 
the  suggestion  was  made  that  the  American 
Knights  of  Columbus  might  be  enlisted  to 
develop  a  work  similar  to  that  of  the  Ameri- 
can Y.  M.  C.  A.  in  the  French  army.  Poste 
di  comforto  have  been  maintained  by  the 
Italian  Red  Cross  and  by  individual  organi- 
zations at  railroad  stations,  but  here  again 
the  provision  is  inadequate,  and  there  is 
opportunity  for  the  Red  Cross  to  inaugurate 
a  large  work. 

Its  Genoa  committee  has  turned  its  chalet 
into  a  canteen  for  the  British,  French  and 
Italian  soldiers,  and  the  Milan  committee  has 
undertaken  to  equip  and  maintain  a  rest 
room,  canteen  and  reading  room  in  barracks 
erected  in  the  station  yard  by  the  municipal- 
ity for  the  service  of  allied  troops  passing 
through  the  city. 

The  Military  Affairs  Department  of  the 
Red  Cross  has  gone  into  the  work  which  the 
Italian  Red  Cross  is  doing  in  canteens  as  well 
as  their  systematic  provision  of  first-aid 
rooms  at  the  railroad  stations,  studied  the 
troop  movement  in  Italy,  and  outlined  for  the 
consideration  of  the  permanent  commission 
a  project  for  installing  canteens  and  rest 
rooms  at  eight  important  junctions  along  the 
railroad  lines  running  up  both  coasts  from 
Reggio  and  Messina  to  the  front. 

Bringing  the  Red  Cross 
Train  to  Rome 

All  these  activities  fall  back  on  the  supply 
service,  serving  both  civil  and  military  de- 
partments, and  here  again  the  story  of  No- 
vember is  one  of  rapid  engineering  in  the  face 
of  almost  impossible  obstacles  of  distance, 
rail  congestion  and  depleted  markets.  With- 
in thirty-six  hours  from  the  time  word  came 
from  the  Red  Cross  Clearing  House  confer- 
ence at  the  Embassy  in  Rome  on  November 
5,  twenty-four  cars  had  been  loaded  at  the 
Red  Cross  stores  center  in  Paris.  The  old 
cab  stables  on  the  Chemin  Vert  had  never 
known  such  activity,  and  20,000  blankets. 


10,000  mattresses,  pillows  and  clothing  made 
up  the  consignment. 

The  main  lines  of  rail  into  Italy  were  laden 
with  a  freightage  of  troops  and  army  para- 
phernalia, and  the  train  was  held  up  for  an 
entire  week.  The  superintendent  of  the  ware- 
house was  detailed  to  accompany  it,  slept  on 
the  cars  and  brought  his  train  into  Rome  five 
days  later — remarkable  time  under  the  cir- 
cumstances. It  was  plastered  with  Red 
Cross  labels,  and  decked  with  American  and 
Italian  flags  which  were  stripped  by  souvenir 
hunters  enroute. 

Once  in  Rome  the  cars  were  trans-shipped 
without  being  unloaded  to  points  designated 
by  the  civil  and  military  affairs  departments 
Bologna,  Florence,  Palermo,  Naples,  Rimini, 
Catania.  In  cases  where  a  carload  lot  did 
not  fit  the  needs,  one  car  was  run  alongside 
another  in  the  yards,  half  the  goods  were  re- 
moved, the  empty  half  filled  from  the  next 
car  or  from  stores  gotten  together  in  Rome, 
and  off  it  would  go.  A  second  shipment  of 
ten  cars  of  food,  and  a  third  of  sixteen  of  food 
and  blankets  which  reached  Rome  in  early 
December,  were  handled  in  like  manner. 

Purchasing 
Supplies 

Meanwhile  purchasing  was  going  forward 
in  Rome,  Milan,  Genoa  and  other  points — 
condensed  milk  in  thousands  of  cases,  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  lires'  worth  of  women's 
and  children's  underwear  (much  of  which  did 
not  come  to  the  warehouses  at  all  or  was 
rammed  into  new  gunnysacks  and  shipped 
poste  haste  from  the  warehouse  floor), 
25,000  shirts,  13,000  blankets,  50,000  woolen 
drawers,  60,000  jerseys,  150,000  drawers  and 
vests,  socks,  thermometers,  medical  supplies 
of  all  sorts. 

In  Rome  the  Red  Cross  secured  through 
the  Italian  Government  two  of  the  top  floors 
of  the  Magazzini  Generali,  served  by  direct 
rail  and  water,  with  electric  cranes  and 
carriers.  Agents  were  despatched  to  arrange 
for  storage  at  ports  of  entry  and  the  two  top 
floors  of  the  Magazzini  Generali  at  Naples 
were  secured,  with  direct  rail  and  water  con- 
nections, electric  hoists  from  boats  into  the 
warehouse  or  into  cars. 

'1 


Similar  facilities  liave  been  secured  in 
Genoa,  and  planned  in  Palermo.  At  the 
same  time  storage  space  was  taken  over  at 
centers  of  need — in  Florence  a  building  given 
by  the  Custom  House;  in  Bologna  the  base- 
ment of  a  large  Palazzo;  in  Milan,  a  ware- 
house lent  by  an  American  firm;  and  lesser 
provisions  elsewhere. 

Within  one  month  from  the  start  the  Red 
Cross  had  50,000  tons  of  warehouse  space  in 
Italy,  and  had  it  practically  empty,  so  rapid 
had  been  the  movement  of  shipments  and 
purchases,  but  ready  for  the  large  invoices 
under  order  by  its  purchasing  department, 
for  further  and  longer  shipments  enroute 
from  its  stores  center  in  France,  and  for 
15,000  tons  of  shipping  space,  sailing  from 
America  prior  to  January  1,  arranged  by  its 
Washington  headquarters,  and  to  be  filled  in 
line  with  cabled  instructions  sent  late  in 
November  from  Rome,  giving  the  approxi- 
mate nature  of  the  articles  desired,  and  the 
kinds  and  quantities  needed  most. 

Caring  for 
the  Homeless 

But  while  this  Red  Cross  adventuring  was 
going  forward  with  the  zest  which  comes  of 
accomplishing  things  in  the  face  of  difiiculties, 
weeks  compacted  of  a  very  different  sub- 
stance of  experience  were  the  portion  of  the 
homeless  and  shattered  families,  filtering 
singly  or  in  masses  from  the  war-wrecked 
north  to  their  abiding  places  throughout  Italy. 
And  it  remains  to  cast  the  relation  of  the  Red 
Cross  work  to  the  great  body  of  effort  that 
reached  out  to  succour  them  and  to  what  lies 
in  the  months  ahead. 

Of  the  stuff  of  which  that  experience  was 
compounded,  the  Red  Cross  workers  north 
and  south  had  no  lack  of  evidence.  A  young 
Italian  officer  came  to  the  office  in  Bologna, 
shared  by  the  Clearing  House  with  the  Red 
Cross.  He  had  himself  been  a  volunteer 
worker  at  the  station  when  the  crush  came 
through.  The  story  was  told  of  a  baby  born 
at  night  on  one  of  the  trains.  The  mother 
had  no  clothes  for  it  and  this  young  Italian 
had  taken  off  his  shirt  to  wrap  it  in.  He  now 
brought  with  him  to  the  office  a  young 
woman  and  a  boy  of  ten. 


The  former  was  of  about  the  appearance  of 
Maud  Adams,  the  actress,  and  both  were 
nicely  dressed.  They  were  of  noble  family, 
from  Udine,  and  with  their  father  of  70,  their 
mother  some  years  younger,  and  a  nurse, 
were  stranded  in  Bologna.  They  left  Udine 
about  2  o'clock  in  the  morning  in  the  midst  of 
disorder.  They  had  to  walk  and  were 
drenched  with  rain.  They  were  in  the  great 
ruck  of  soldiers,  contadini,  mules,  camions, 
ambulances,  all  the  dishevel  of  an  army  and 
a  province  in  mad  retreat.  They  made 
twenty  kilometres  or  more  by  the  afternoon 
of  that  day. 

Here  they  got  on  a  train,  but  this  was 
wrecked  by  a  bomb  which  hit  one  of  the  cars 
and  killed  the  refugees  within.  Then  this 
family  was  able  to  get  a  camion  and  reach 
Spilimbergo,  on  the  western  bank  of  the 
Tagliamento,  where  an  officer  looked  after 
them  and  gave  them  a  place  to  sleep.  They 
had  been  resting  for  two  hours  when  the 
town  was  shelled  by  the  advancing  Austrians. 
They  got  up  and  again  found  places  in  cam- 
ions. Later  they  obtained  a  wagon  and  con- 
tinued their  journey,  sometimes  going  for  two 
days  without  being  able  to  get  food.  It  took 
them  seven  days  to  reach  Bologna  and  they 
were  able  to  bring  nothing  with  them  but  the 
clothing  on  their  backs. 

Stories  of 
Refugees 

A  relief  worker  at  Naples  tells  of  a  woman 
who  was  standing  at  her  farmyard  door  when 
the  order  came  to  run.  They  had  their  house- 
hold goods  in  a  wagon  to  which  they  had 
hitched  their  horse  and  an  ox,  sturdy  animals 
but  slow.  Her  husband  told  her  to  take  the 
children  and  run  and  he  would  come  on. 

In  the  crush  she  had  become  separated  from 
the  children  and  here  she  was  in  Naples,  with 
no  knowledge  of  the  whereabouts  of  husband 
or  children.  Another  woman  arrived  with 
three  children,  the  fourth  baby  had  been 
drowned.  The  bridge  on  the  Tagliamento 
they  had  thought  to  cross  was  down  and,  as 
the  mother  tried  to  get  the  other  children 
over,  the  baby  was  swept  from  the  basket  in 
which  she  had  carried  it  on  her  back. 

When  the  American,  later  a  Red  Cross 
worker,  took  charge  of  the  clothing  distribu- 


[18] 


tion  for  the  Italian  Red  Cross  at  the  chief 
asili  in  Florence,  the  church  and  cloisters  of 
Santa  Maria  Novella,  there  were  9,000  people 
lodged  there,  all  but  perhaps  50  of  them 
women  and  children,  for  these  families  of 
northern  peasantry  are  rich  in  children. 

One  woman  of  28  brought  nine,  and  an 
annual  baby  from  19  would  seem  to  be  the 
general  rule.  The  people  were  without 
clothing  other  than  those  they  wore,  and 
almost  none  of  them  had  a  complete  outfit. 
Inside  of  two  days  the  American  colony  had 
raised  6,000  francs  for  purchase  and  collected 
10,000  used  garments.  Before  coming  in  the 
line  the  families  were  first  interviewed  by 
volunteers,  the  orders  turned  in  and  the 
mothers  given  duplicate  slips  of  paper  with 
their  needs  indicated. 

Here  a  woman  would  come  with  five  or  six 
children,  among  them  only  one  pair  of  shoes, 
with  perhaps  no  child  with  a  complete  set  of 
underclothes,  and  the  mother  herself  still  wet 
from  the  rain  from  the  waist  down.  Among 
them  were  women  who  had  walked  for  60  or 
70  kilometers,  and  their  feet  and  legs  were 
swollen  so  badly  that  they  had  to  be  sent  to 
the  infirmary. 

As  many  as  80  women  and  children  had 
been  packed  in  a  cattle  car,  and  for  24  and 
sometimes  48  hours  they  had  gone  without  a 
chance  to  get  out  to  get  food  or  water  or 
respond  to  a  call  of  nature.  At  Santa  Maria 
Novella  their  numbers  were  such  while  wait- 
ing to  be  sent  on  that  not  only  were  there  not 
beds  enough  for  them,  but  the  straw  gave  out, 
and  many  slept  with  nothing  between  them 
and  the  stone  floor  but  the  empty  ticks. 

IV 

Needs  of  the 
Fugitives 

TWO  reports  reaching  the  Red  Cross 
from  Leghorn  on  different  dates  illus- 
trate both  the  particular  needs  of  the 
fugitives,  the  marshalling  of  sympathy  which 
made  great  practical  gains  in  each  locality  as 
the  month  advanced,  and  incidentally  the 
way  Americans  dovetailed  into  the  situa- 
tion. Here,  by  mid-November,  the  number 
of  refugees  were  such  that  the  last  lot  had 


been  put  on  the  floor  of  the  Goldoni  Theatre. 

Like  refugees  reaching  Leghorn,  each  had 
a  straw  mattress  and  a  blanket.  Food  was 
very  short,  and  work  for  the  refugees  had, 
much  of  it,  been  done  at  random. 

To  make  American  help  count  and  at  the 
same  time  help  organize  the  situation,  the 
American  consul  undertook  the  distribution  of 
clothes,  milk  and  cocoa  in  two  refuges  shel- 
tering 900  people.  . 

Report  from 
Inspector 

The  first  report  is  from  a  Red  Cross  inspec- 
tor on  November  17: 

"Great  need  for  condensed  milk,  rice,  sugar 
for  babies.  Most  needed  in  way  of  clothing: 
Men's  and  boys'  suits  and  underwear, 
women's  underwear,  blouses,  hygienic  linen, 
handkerchiefs,  shoes  (big  sizes).  The  amount 
of  clothes  needed  required  cannot  be  found  on 
the  place,  the  shops  having  been  exhausted 
by  the  first  rush.  Suggest  purchase  combs 
for  the  women,  who  are  in  neglected  state, 
also  thread  and  needles.  The  lot  of  clothes 
sent  from  Rome  has  arrived;  the  blankets,  not 
yet.  The  consul  has  written  today  to  the 
manufacturer.  He  will  have  500  of  them. 
The  pregnant  women,  whom  I  counted  up  to 
40,  will  be  in  due  time  taken  care  of  by  the 
maternity.  Layettes  needed,  the  maternity 
giving  only  medical  assistance.  Disinfecting 
soap  and  insect  powder  needed." 

A  Report 

Six  Days  Later 

The  second  is  from  the  consul,  six  days 
later,  on  November  23: 

"Yesterday  we  distributed  over  100 
packages  to  men  and  women  at  Borgo  Capuc- 
cini.  When  the  distribution  was  over  a 
shout  went  up  from  all  the  refugees.  It  was 
like  applause  in  a  theatre  after  an  excellent 
rendition  of  music— a  lull  for  a  minute,  and 
then  the  outburst.  It  came  after  each  woman 
had  received  her  package  and  examined  the 
contents.  She  realized  that  great  care  had 
been  taken  to  give  her  just  what  suited  her. 
There  was  no  confusion.  The  number  on 
each  package  corresponded  to  the  number  of 


[191 


the  card.  In  the  packages  for  women  were 
two  undershirts,  an  underskirt,  a  blouse,  a 
small  shawl,  a  bandana  for  the  head,  an  apron, 
woollen  yarn  and  needles  for  making  stock- 
ings. 

"The  ideal  way  would  be  to  have  a  package 
contain  a  complete  outfit  and  then  send  the 
refugees  in  groups  of  twenty  to  the  baths. 
Have  them  take  a  hot  bath  using  plenty  of 
soap,  put  on  the  new  clothes  and  leave  the 
old  to  be  disinfected  and  washed  and  returned 
to  them.  I  have  arranged  with  the  hospital 
here  for  baths,  disinfecting  and  washing.  I 
could  not  wait  to  do  this  with  the  refugees  at 
the  Borgo  Capuccini.  However,  when  I  shall 
have  completed  their  outfits,  I  will  send  them 
for  a  bath  as  above  stated. 

"I  have  cards  ready  for  Cantiere  Galinare 
(now  about  500  refugees,  expect  300  more 

there).    Miss  R   (English)  and  Miss 

S   (American)  are  there  now  examin- 

ing each  woman  and  child  and  making 
notes  as  to  the  size  of  each  woman,  etc.,  so 
that  in  connection  with  the  card  system,  a 
complete  outfit  may  be  packed  suitable  for 
each  personand  distributed  without  confusion, 
Have  supplied  large  and  small  combs  to  all 
women  and  also  600  cloths,  six  to  each. 
They  were  in  great  need  of  same.  Just  re- 
ceived invoice  for  1,000  shirts.  Will  go  to 
Pisa  tomorrow." 

The  Red  Cross  committee  which  traversed 
the  belt  through  which  this  stream  of  refugees 
was  yet  in  process  saw  the  varying  provisions 
for  them  and  carried  their  inquiries  into 
points  of  destination  in  the  south,  recorded 
first  of  all  their  "deep  and  lasting  impression 
of  the  magnitude,  the  seriousness  and  the 
heart-rending  tragedy  of  the  refugee  problem 
with  which  Italy  has  had  to  deal."  From  the 
refugees  themselves  they  heard  the  story  after 
story  of  what  befell  them  after  they  left  their 
homes  in  the  Friuli  and  these  they  summed  up 
as  follows: 

Tales  of 
Terror 

"Women  with  young  children  and  the 
sick,  like  others,  came  away  suddenly,  fami- 
lies often  separated,  usually  with  no  time 
whatever  to  gather  even  things  needed  for  the 

I 


journey.  They  tramped  in  the  mountains  or 
along  the  roads  from  two  days  to  four  days, 
sometimes  a  week,  before  reaching  a  railway 
station  where  they  could  be  taken  on  trains  or 
before  being  picked  up  by  camions.  In  these 
first  days  they  were  subjected  to  every  priva- 
tion conceivable.  Even  after  reaching  the 
railways  they  were  supplied  with  food  irregu- 
larly and  suffered  from  hunger  as  well  as  from 
cold.  What  is  even  worse,  perhaps,  they  often 
had  no  chance  to  wash  and  often  had  no 
change  of  clothing  and  the  condition  in  which 
some  of  those  who  had  been  ten  days  or  two 
weeks  on  their  journey  arrived  in  southern 
Italy  is  indescribable.  After  the  first  rush, 
arrangements  were,  of  course,  made  in  the 
cities  through  which  they  passed  to  supply 
food  and  in  some  instances  blankets  and 
clothing;  but  even  as  far  south  as  Naples 
many  infants  were  found  who  had  no  changes 
and  whose  bodies  were  in  a  shocking  condition 
from  a  lack  of  necessary  attention. 

Health  of 
Refugees 

"In  view  of  all  the  hardships  and  privations 
it  is  notable  that  the  general  health  of  the 
refugees  in  every  city  which  we  have  visited 
is  reported  at  present  to  be  on  the  whole  very 
good.  Probably  a  more  thorough  medical 
examination  might  disclose  more  serious  re- 
sults, but  careful  inquiry  of  physicians, 
officials  and  relief  workers  has  indicated  that, 
with  few  exceptions,  there  is  no  marked 
prevalence  of  digestive,  nervous  or  infectious 
disease. 

"To  appreciate  the  suffering  and  hardships 
involved  in  the  sudden  dislodging  of  perhaps 
a  half  million  people,  it  is  necessary  to  bear  in 
mind  the  loss  of  their  homes  and  possessions, 
the  breaking  up  of  families,  the  tenforced 
journey  to  distant  and  unknown  places,  where 
people  eat  different  food  and  speak  dialects  so 
different  from  their  own  as  sometimes  to  be 
scarcely  intelligible,  where  the  occupations 
are  different  and  where  the  charitable  re- 
sources are  likely  to  be  already  overtaxed  by 
the  needs  of  the  families  of  soldiers,  and  other 
local  conditions  resulting  from  the  war. 

"Intensifying  this  terrible  picture  of  mis- 
fortune is  the  fact  that  the  whole  population  is 

] 


suffering  from  a  scarcity  of  food  and  of  fuel, 
from  abnormally  high  prices,  and  from  other 
disturbances  with  which  the  war  has  made  the 
Red  Cross  familiar  in  every  country,  but 
which  are  nowhere,  perhaps,  more  serious  at 
the  present  time  than  in  Italy." 

The  Work  of 
the  Italians 

To  have  cared  for  such  a  dislodged  popula- 
tion would  have  taxed  the  ingenuity  and  re- 
sourcefulness of  any  country,  could  it  have 
devoted  itself  to  it  with  singleness  of  purpose; 
but  it  must  be  remembered  that  this  was  only 
the  third  of  the  tremendous  responsibilities 
engaging  Italy  in  November.  It  had  to  sal- 
vage an  army  and  turn  back  an  invasion  with 
its  remaining  organized  forces.  "Although 
inevitably,"  to  quote  the  committee,  "there 
has  been  much  confusion  and  suffering, 
nevertheless  an  enormous  amount  of  effective 
and  systematic  assistance  has  been  given  from 
the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  long  and 
painful  journey  which  these  thousands  of  re- 
fugees have  had  to  take,  and  plans  have  been 
inaugurated  for  incorporating  them  into  the 
communities  to  which  they  have  come  or  are 
on  the  way." 

In  its  national  railways  and  its  prefectorial 
system,  Italy  had  agencies  through  which 
to  work,  which  without  doubt  lent  themselves 
to  the  emergency  better  than  any  governmen- 
tal machinery  we  possess  in  the  United  States. 
The  prefectos  are  the  executive  heads  of  the 
provinces  into  which  Italy  is  divided.  In 
function  they  correspond  somewhat  to  the 
governors  of  our  States,  in  responsibility  to 
central  authority  and  in  the  size  of  the  areas 
they  are  assigned  to,  the  United  States  dis- 
trict attorneys  may  afford  a  better  analogy. 

The  prefectos  who  were  met  by  the  Red 
Cross  Committee  on  its  travels  impressed 
them  as  men  of  ability,  character  and  intelli- 
gence. They  have  facilities  at  their  disposal 
and,  as  representatives  of  the  Ministry  of  the 
Interior  in  the  Central  Government,  they 
form  a  well-knit  and  unified  system  of  admin- 
istration through  which  the  problem  could 
be  dealt  with  nationally. 


The  Transportation 
Problem 

The  first  element  in  that  problem  was  that 
of  transportation.  A  secretary  general  for 
civil  affairs,  asili,  attached  to  the  supreme 
command,  and  hitherto  charged  with  admin- 
istering those  districts  in  the  Trcntino  and  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Trieste,  which  had  been 
wrested  from  Austria  earlier  in  the  war, 
acted  as  the  connecting  link  between  the 
military  and  civil  authorities  in  getting  the 
refugees  out.  The  major  decisions  as  to 
where  they  should  be  taken  were  made  by  the 
Ministry  of  the  Interior  in  Rome,  which  com- 
municated with  the  prefects  and  learned  how 
many  each  province  could  care  for. 

The  main  stream  came  down  through 
Padua  and  Modena.  The  railroads  direct  to 
the  west  were  engrossed  by  the  army  and 
refugees  were  sent  by  a  roundabout  way  to 
Milan,  which  became  the  general  clearing 
station  for  Turin,  Genoa,  Leghorn  and  the 
northwest.  The  main  funnel,  however,  was 
through  Bologna  and  Florence  and  thence 
through  Rome  to  the  south,  until  the  stream 
was  switched  to  the  Adriatic  coast  lines. 
Perhaps  7.5,000  were  sent  to  Naples  and  be- 
yond, 25,000  of  them  to  Sicily;  many  Vene- 
tians were  gotten  out  by  ferry  to  Chioggia 
and  then  down  the  east  coast.  In  this  scheme 
of  things,  the  road  which  parallels  the  Ap- 
penines,  crossing  Italy  from  the  southeast  to 
the  northwest,  on  the  route  of  the  old  Emilian 
way,  became  an  important  carrier. 

Thousands  of  refugees  left  towns  or  coun- 
trysides of  their  own  volition  and  at  their  own 
expense,  by  rail  or  wagon.  The  government's 
responsibility  was  for  those  carried  by  special 
train,  and  these  were  confined  to  the  cars  or  to 
the  wholesale  lodging  places  arranged  at  such 
general  clearing  stations  as  Florence  and 
Milan,  where  they  were  cared  for  until  they 
were  sent  on  under  instruction  from  Rome,  to 
the  provincial  capitals.  Certains  regions  with 
special  facilities  for  housing  refugees,  such  as 
the  Italian  Riviera  and  the  Adriatic  coast 
with  their  empty  resort  buildings,  were 
large  receivers.  Distributions  within  a 
province,  as  between  towns  and  villages,  was 
in  the  hands  of  the  local  prefects,  each  of 
whom  went  through  somewhat  the  same  pro- 


[21] 


cess  in  their  districts  as  was  carried  out 
nationally.  This  was  the  system,  but  in  the 
rush  of  the  early  days  it  did  not  always  work 
smoothly,  and  there  was  confusion  and  clog- 
ging at  various  points. 

Funds  for 
Refugees 

The  second  element  in  the  problem  of  the 
care  of  refugees  is  that  of  income.  To  the 
prefects  also  the  central  government  sent 
funds  to  feed  the  refugees  while  enroute,  or  in 
asile,  and  to  provide  daily  allowances  of,  on 
the  average,  one  lira  a  day  per  person  (the 
figure  differed  indifferent  localities  and  accord- 
ing to  the  number  of  children  in  a  family) 
once  they  were  settled  in  houses  or  rooms 
requisitioned  for  the  purpose.  At  that  point 
also  responsibility  for  their  supervision  was 
generally  shifted  to  the  mayors  of  the  com- 
munes, but  the  national  government  con- 
tinues to  provide  the  allocation  and  to  be 
responsible  for  broad  measures  for  meeting 
their  needs,  under  a  specially  created  High 
Commission. 

Supplementing  and  co-operating  with  this 
government  activity,  many  voluntary  Italian 
agencies  have  worked  with  devotion  and  an 
intelligent  grasp  of  the  situation.  Especially 
should  be  mentioned  the  Italian  Red  Cross, 
which  threw  open  to  the  refugees  its  rest  and 
first  aid  rooms  in  the  stations;  ran  asile  as  at 
Florence;  drew  on  its  supplies  for  blankets, 
bedding,  etc.,  as  at  Milan;  and  in  some  dis- 
tricts, as  at  Catania,  has  been  the  agency 
most  concerned  with  providing  for  the  refu- 
gees away  from  the  main  urban  centers. 
And  especially  also  should  be  mentioned  the 
Comitatos  Civile,  a  loosely  federated  group  of 
local  organizations,  created  to  develop 
various  forms  of  aid  for  the  families  of 
soldiers. 

These  have  in  many  local  centers  developed 
a  wide  range  of  social  work;  and,  in  some 
localities,  at  once  expanded  their  scope  to  care 
for  refugees.  Usually,  however,  a  distinct 
committee,  called  by  some  such  name  as 
Comitato  del  Profughi,  has  been  formed  under 
the  auspices  of  prefetto  or  sindaco  (mayor)  to 
raise  a  relief  fund  and  to  carry  on  work  through 
sub-committees  on  housing,  employment  and 


the  like.  Apart  from  these  general  organiza- 
tions, personal  leadership  or  group  action  has 
brought  special  activities  into  play  or  gave 
them  color — such  as  a  sculptor,  in  Rome,  who 
has  scarcely  touched  chisel  since  the  war 
began;  a  bishop  in  Vicenza,  the  active  chair- 
man of  a  provincial  committee  for  the  protec- 
tion of  profughi  driven  down  from  the  moun- 
tains; members  of  the  old  nobility  in  Sicily, 
and  a  Scotch  Salvation  Army  adjutant,  who 
for  four  days  with  the  knot  of  people  she 
could  gather  about  her,  ministered  single- 
handed  to  the  mothers  and  babies  coming 
through  Naples. 

It  was  to  a  granddaughter  of  Garibaldi,  who 
had  served  throughout  the  war  as  a  nurse, 
that  the  Red  Cross  gave  funds  to  open  a  creche 
and  playroom  in  Rome,  so  as  to  enable  some 
refugee  mothers  to  work;  and  to  a  daughter  of 
Lombroso  funds  to  care  for  refugee  orphans 
in  Turin. 

Work  in 
Naples 

In  Naples  an  active  Friulian  committee 
came  into  being  through  members  of  the  local 
university  faculty,  themselves  natives  of 
Friuli;  and  an  energetic  committee  of  citizens 
of  Venice,  under  the  lead  of  a  professor  of 
international  law  at  the  University  of  Padua, 
also  a  Venetian,  followed  their  refugee  towns- 
folk to  the  sea  coast  colonies  and  opened 
offices  at  Rimini. 

The  single  organization  which  bore  the 
brunt  of  the  largest  emergent  demand  and 
which  in  its  systematic  provision  was  out- 
standingly first,  is  the  Umanitaria  of  Milan, 
with  60  per  cent,  of  its  members  made  up  of 
working  people.  The  Umanitaria  doubled  the 
capacity  of  its  dormitories  for  immigrants  at 
the  station,  erected  tents  in  the  yards,  ran  a 
large  restaurant  which  handled  thousands 
every  day,  served  as  many  as  3,000  refugees  at 
four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  opened  an  in- 
firmary with  doctors  and  nurses,  organized 
100  students  into  four  shiftsof  six  hours  each, 
to  serve  as  aides  on  the  station  platforms,  and 
co-operated  with  the  municipal  housing  and 
employment  bureaus,  the  labor  exchange  and 
agricultural  society  in  a  well-conceived  scheme 
of  placement  and  distribution. 


[22] 


The  Three  Stages 
of  the  Flight 

THE  first  stage — the  sudden  rush  of  ref- 
ugees from  farmhouse  and  village  and 
town,  afoot,  in  wagons,  in  camions,  to 
such  points  on  the  railroads  as  they  could 
get  passage — was  passed  when  the  American 
Red  Cross  entered  the  field.  Its  participation 
began  in  the  second  stage,  the  transport  of 
trainloadsof  refugees  to  the  great  distribution 
centers  and  thence  to  the  provincial  capitals, 
but  such  was  the  congestion  that  by  no  means 
all  of  its  larger  consignments  of  supplies, 
however  rapidly  gotten  together  and  shipped, 
reached  their  destinations  while  the  flood 
tide  was  in  transit. 

Had  the  stream  doubled  or  trebled — and  of 
that  there  were  tense  forebodings — they  would 
have  been  ready  to  hand.  As  it  was,  they 
were  employed  at  once  to  help  meet  the  no 
less  emergent  needs  of  the  third  stage,  the 
immediate  care  of  great  bodies  of  refugees  in 
the  first  shelters  provided  for  them.  And,  as 
it  was,  though  such  supplies  as  got  through, 
such  canteens  as  could  be  opened,  as  at 
Rome,  Chioggia,  Genoa,  Ancona;  such  helpers 
as  could  be  sent  out,  or  mustered  individually 
or  in  committee  as  in  Genoa  and  Milan;  and 
more  especially  through  rapid  advances  of 
moneys  to  consuls  and  field  delegates  and 
Italian  agencies,  who  laid  their  hands  on 
things  to  be  done  locally  (as  in  the  example 
cited  in  Leghorn)  the  Red  Cross  played  a 
spirited,  if  scattered,  part  from  the  first. 

This  has  afforded  acquaintanceship  and 
momentum  in  organizing  its  more  systematic 
work  now  in  progress.  Of  the  need  of  that 
work  every  day's  mail,  every  report  from  field 
delegates  and  traveling  inspectors  adds  to  the 
weight  of  testimony,  as  this  is  written— from 
Sicilian  towns,  where  work  is  difficult  to 
obtain  and  local  milk  is  unobtainable  for 
mothers  and  children,  from  vUlages  where 
people  are  sleeping  on  the  ground  and  whole 
families  are  sick  of  fever  and  rheumatism; 
from  farming  communities  in  the  Appenines 
where  the  corn  crop  failed  last  year;  from 
towns  in  Elyria  where  refugees  are  still 
sleeping  without  beds  on  the  damp  straw; 


from  seacoast  \'illas,  fair  to  the  eye  but  void  of 
blankets;  from  crowded  tenements  in  Naples 
— from  industrial  districts  in  the  northwest, 
where  work  is  plenty  but  where  there  are  none 
the  less  great  numbers  of  broken  families, 
sick  or  infirm,  or  without  breadwinners,  and 
where  fuel  is  scarce  to  be  had;  from  wherever 
throughout  Italy  refugee  families  are  williout 
adequate  footwear  and  underwear,  with  scant 
bedding  and  without  the  rudiments  of  house- 
hold life;  where  food  was  short  before  the 
refugees  came  and  the  people  form  in  long 
queues  for  their  meager  daily  allotments. 

Future 

Red  Cross  Work 

In  addressing  itself  to  the  future,  two  main 
lines  of  procedure  present  themselves  to  the 
American  Red  Cross:  (a)  The  establishment 
of  distinctive  relief  agencies  of  its  own,  such 
as  a  hospital,  a  refuge,  a  popular  kitchen,  a 
station  canteen,  a  housing  conmiittcc;  or  (b) 
work  through  existing  Italian  agencies, 
through  grants  of  financial  assistance  supple- 
mented, wherever  possible,  by  appropriate 
forms  of  personal  service.  In  general,  the 
committee  of  investigation  believed  that  more 
permanent  work  will  come  by  the  latter 
method,  although  recognizing  that  local 
conditions  may  require  direct  action  and  not 
wishing  to  recommend  any  policy  which 
would  make  it  impossible  or  even  difficult 
when  the  conditions  require  it. 

The  system  of  responsible  regional  dele- 
gates for  consular  work  recently  outlined, 
working  closely  in  conjunction  with  American 
consuls  and  Italian  prefects  and  agencies,  will 
afford  a  framework  flexible  enough  to  serve 
both  co-operative  and  direct  action. 

In  this  connection  a  statement  issued  in 
mid- November  by  the  High  Italian  Commis- 
sioner for  refugees  is  significant.    He  said: 

"The  work  of  the  American  Red  Cross  in 
favor  of  the  war  refugees  is  full  of  goodness, 
pity  and  sagacity.  The  prefects  must  second 
it  and  put  the  delegates  of  that  most  provident 
institution  in  friendly  relations  with  all  our 
committees.  Any  hesitation  would  be  harm- 
ful politically  and  practically.  I  beg  you  to 
give  me  continual  information  regarding  this 
cooperation  with  the  Americans,  permitting 


[23] 


them  freely  to  expand  their  activity  without 
bureaucratic  hindrances.  The  Commissioner 
is  most  desirious  that  the  cooperation  may  be 
full  of  straightforward  and  open  benevolence. 
I  have  seen  the  representatives  of  the  Ameri- 
can Red  Cross  and  am  persuaded  that  their 
goodness  equals  their  competency  for  good." 

Statement  of  the 
Italian  High  Commission 

Turning  from  the  questions  of  organization 
to  the  substance  of  the  relief  problem,  the 
committee  took  up  the  challenge  of  circum- 
stance, now  that  the  first  emergency  calling 
for  assistance  in  leaving  home  and  in  transit 
had  passed.   Its  findings  follow: 

"  If  for  any  reason  there  should  be  a  further 
retirement — for  example,  to  the  line  of  the 
Adige — several  large  towns,  including  Verona, 
Vicenza,  Padua  and  Rovigo,  would  be  affected. 
We  are  informed  that  definite  orders  have  been 
issued  against  the  evacuation  of  this  new 
territory,  even  in  case  of  invasion.  The 
inhabitants  have  been  officially  advised  to 
remain  where  they  are,  chiefly,  no  doubt,  for 
the  reason  that  with  the  present  limited  supply 
of  food  it  would  be  impossible  to  care  for  so 
great  an  influx  of  population  in  the  remaining 
part  of  the  country,  and  also  because  property 
would  be  sacrificed  which  might  be  preserved 
by  the  owners  if  they  remained  to  look  after  it. 

"While  these  reasons  are  valid,  it  must  be 
anticipated  that  in  case  of  retirement  there 
would  certainly  be  a  great  exodus  on  the  part 
of  those  who  would  not  wish  to  remain  within 
the  enemy  lines,  and  this  retirement  would  be 
accompanied,  like  that  from  the  Friuli,  by  all 
the  more  confusion  and  hardship  because  not 
included  within  the  plans  of  the  authorities  or 
even  contrary  to  their  policy.  The  American 
Red  Cross  should  be  ready  to  cooperate  in 
meeting  any  such  second  emergency.  The 
first  came  without  warning;  but  for  any  pre- 
ventable hardships  resulting  from  further 
possible  retirement  there  would  be  no  such 
excuse. 

"Ample  supplies  of  blankets,  clothing  and 
food  should  be  collected  as  far  north  as 
Bologna,  in  greater  quantities  in  Florence 
and  in  the  larger  centers  to  which  the  refugees 
will  be  sent — to  the  west,  to  the  south  and  the 


southeast,    tor  those  who  move  westward 
the  natural  place  for  the  storehouse  would  be 
Milan,  where  the  Umanitaria,  to  which  we 
have  referred;  the  Bonomelli,  a  smaller  or- 
ganization with  similar  facilities,  and  our 
American  relief  committee  would  all  be  ready 
to  help  the  official  authorities.  For  those  who 
go  down  the  east  coast  the  stores  and  hospital 
facilities  established  for  the  Venetian  refugees 
at  Rimini,  and  food  and  clothing  stations  at 
Ravena  and  Ancona,  would  come  into  play. 
The  main  stream,   however,   would  come 
through  the  central  funnel  at  Florence,  and 
we  would  emphasize  the  great  importance  of 
having  extensive   stores  at   Bologna  and 
Florence  available  for  instant  use  by  the 
proper  agencies  in  those  places  on  the  in- 
itiative of  our  representative  in  Florence. 
Further  west  and  south  a  relief  program 
could  be  worked  out  more  deliberately  at 
Turin,  Genoa,  Naples  and  in  Sicily,  but  at 
each  place  we  should  be  ready  to  give  as- 
sistance at  the  very  moment  of  arrival. 

The  Venetian  , 
Colonies 

"Aside  from  the  possibility  of  a  second 
great  emergency  there  are  certain  special 
movements  of  population  in  which  the 
American  Red  Cross  has  a  legitimate  interest. 
The  most  important  of  these  is  the  present 
continuing  evacuation  of  Venice.  Apart 
from  any  question  of  a  nearer  approach  by 
the  enemy  it  has  been  thought  advisable  to 
evacuate  the  civilian  population  of  Venice. 

"Fortunately,  it  has  been  possible  to  do 
this  all  deliberately  and  in  such  a  way  as  to 
prevent  the  indiscriminate  scattering  of  the 
population,  although  many  inhabitants  of 
Venezia  were,  of  course,  included  in  the 
original  rush  of  refugees  to  the  south  and 
west.  The  gradual  removal  which  has  since 
been  going  on,  in  contrast  to  what  happened 
in  the  first  days  of  the  invasion,  is  more  like 
an  orderly  migration.  It  has,  in  fact,  been 
compared  with  the  swarming  of  a  hive.  Up- 
wards of  ten  thousand  colonists  have  thus 
been  taken  to  certain  villages  selected  for  the 
purpose  in  the  neighborhood  of  Rimini. 
Many  of  those  people  were  employed  in 
Venice  in  workshops  established  for  the  pur- 


[24J 


pose  of  giving  needed  employment  to  women, 
and  tlie  equipment  of  tliese  shops  has  been 
transferred  bodily  to  the  new  locality. 

"With  Red  Cross  funds  supplied  by  us  a 
hospital  has  been  established  for  the  benefit 
of  this  colony  in  Rimini  in  charge  of  a  Vene- 
tian physician  who  formerly  directed  a  hos- 
pital in  Venice.  The  Italian  Red  Cross  pro- 
vides the  nurses.  This  is  an  extraordinary 
interesting  experiment  to  which  the  American 
Red  Cross  can  wisely  give  further  assistance, 
as  may  be  necessary,  in  the  hope  that  it  will 
influence  the  handling  of  the  refugee  problem 
elsewhere.  We  found,  in  fact,  several  in- 
stances in  which  the  authorities  were  attempt- 
ing to  keep  together  neighbors  from  the  same 
village,  and  naturally  every  attempt  was  made 
to  enable  refugees  to  find  relatives  and 
friends.  Extensive  use  is  made  of  the  news- 
papers in  printing  notices  of  this  kind. 

Children  in  the 
War  Zone 

"Another  special  problem  to  which  we  have 
sought  to  call  the  attention  of  local  author- 
ities is  that  of  the  children  in  the  actual  fight- 
ing zone.  In  our  visit  to  the  Piave  front  we 
saw  scores  of  such  children  near  enough  to  be 
under  shell  fire  and  evidently  in  great  danger 
even  if  there  should  be  only  the  slightest  re- 
tirement. By  some  plan,  such  as  which  has 
been  adopted  behind  the  fighting  lines  in 
Belgium,  for  gathering  up  these  children  and 
caring  for  them  at  points  not  too  distant 
from  their  homes  where  schooling  facilities 
could  be  provided  and  their  parents  kept  in- 
formed as  to  their  whereabouts  and  welfare, 
the  reproach  of  exposing  children  of  tender 
years  to  the  physical  dangers  of  the  actual 
front  could  be  avoided. 

"A  third  task  which  we  believe  should  re- 
ceive immediate  attention,  and  which  we 
discussed  with  General  Diaz  and  with  the 
local  authorities  of  Padua,  is  the  removal  of 
the  aged  and  the  sick  from  the  fighting  zone 
and  from  the  towns  immediately  behind  the 
front,  so  that  at  least  those  who  are  unable  to 
move  and  who  cannot  be  moved  without 
obvious  suffering  and  hardship  might  be 
cared  for  in  time  in  case  fighting  should 
sweep  through  the  district.   Our  understand- 


ing is  that  no  objection  would  be  made  to 
this,  notwithstanding  the  general  policy 
above  mentioned  that  in  case  of  invasion  the 
civilian  population  would  remain. 

The  Period  of 
Transition 

"The  first  emergency  has  passed.  The 
larger  constructive  work  lies  ahead.  At  the 
present  moment  we  are  in  a  transitional 
period  which  may  be  described  as  the  period  of 
arrival  and  first  settlement,  or  as  the  period 
of  distribution.  Our  information  is  that  there 
are  still  many  refugee  families  in  every  part 
of  Italy  who  are  sorely  in  need  of  blankets, 
mattresses,  underclothing,  warm  suits  and 
shoes,  and  food.  Therefore,  although  the 
first  emergency  is  past  it  is  stilt  essential  that 
the  American  Red  Cross,  both  at  its  central 
head<iuarters  and  in  its  local  organizations, 
should  bend  every  effort  to  get  supplies  of 
these  things  as  rapidly  as  is  humanly  possible, 
actually  delivered  to  the  suffering  families  and 
individuals. 

"This  should  be  a  first  responsibility — to 
supplement  what  the  official  and  voluntary 
Italian  agencies  are  doing  and  to  see  to  it  as 
far  as  our  resources  go  that  every  refugee 
actually  has  these  essentials.  Responsibility 
as  to  just  how  to  do  it  sht)uld  be  decentralized, 
but  emphatic  and  repeated  insistence  that  it 
should  be  done  should  go  persistently  from 
headquarters  to  every  locality  where  we  are 
or  can  be  represented.  The  general  problem 
of  food  is  of  course  one  for  the  government, 
but  condensed  milk  for  babies  and  other 
kinds  of  special  diet  can  be  included  in  our 
supplemenatry  relief  measures. 

The  State 
of  Health 

"The  first  of  the  more  permanent  problems 
of  resident  refugees  is  that  of  health.  Hun- 
dreds of  these  people  have  gone  through 
suffering  and  privation  which  have  left  their 
mark.  We  have  taken  steps  in  several  places 
to  set  going  different  forms  of  medical  help 
and  these  should  be  further  developed  where- 
ever  existing  agencies  are  not  sufficient  to 
cope  with  the  abnormal  conditions  created  by 
the  influx  of  refugees. 


2.51 


This  work  may  take  various  forms,  as  for 
instance,  establishing  a  special  refuge  for  sick 
and  infirm,  as  has  been  done  by  the  American 
committee  in  Milan;  taking  a  certain  number 
of  beds  in  an  existing  hospital  with  an  Italian 
staff,  as  has  been  done  in  Rimini;  organizing 
a  traveling  dispensary  especially  for  children, 
as  has  been  done  by  the  American  Red  Cross 
in  France,  at  Nesle,  and  as  may  be  developed 
in  Rimini;  a  systematic  inspection  of  refugee 
families  to  discover  persons  in  need  of  medical 
care  or  nursing,  such  as  Miss  Gunn  wishes  to 
undertake  in  Naples  and  the  physicians  of  the 
prefecture  are  carrying  on  at  Messina,  or, 
better  than  any  of  these,  a  well-rounded 
health  center  with  various  special  services  by 
American  doctors  and  nurses  who  could 
familiarize  the  communities  in  which  they 
work  with  the  methods  and  ideas  of  American 
preventive  health  work. 

"This  again  would  be  in  line  with  plans 
which  the  American  Red  Cross  has  already 
worked  out  in  Paris  and  other  French  com- 
munities, and  if  such  health  centers  could  be 
established  with  the  cordial  approval  and 
cooperation  of  sanitary  officials  and  physi- 
cians of  the  local  community  they  might 
become|the  most  important  lasting  contribu- 
tion which  the  American  Red  Cross  could 
make  in  Italy.  No  doubt  local  Italian  in- 
stitutions could  be  found  around  which  such 
Red  Cross  activities  could  be  organized. 

The  Housing 
Problem 

"Next  to  health  the  most  urgent  refugee 
problem  is  that  of  housing.  We  find  refugees 
living  in  hotels,  hospitals,  convents,  schools, 
all  kinds  of  converted  buildings,  some  admir- 
able as  far  as  physical  comfort  is  concerned, 
others  leaving  much  to  be  desired  even  in 
this  respect.  This  manner  of  life  is  one  which 
should  be  ended  as  soon  as  possible.  Even  if 
clean  and  warm  and  commodious,  they 
seldom  afford  possibility  for  a  normal  home 
life,  for  privacy,  for  natural  employment.  In 
one  city,  for  example,  some  four  hundred  men, 
women  and  children  were  living  in  the  wards 
of  a  hospital  under  conditions  as  institutional- 
ized as  those  of  an  almshouse,  as  promiscuous 
as  those  of  the  steerage  of  an  ocean  liner. 


"They  had  excellent  beds,  comfortable 
mattresses  and  the  constant  attention  of  a 
doctor.  Men,  women  and  children  were  liv- 
ing, eating  and  sleeping  in  the  same  large 
ward.  If  they  had  been  in  need  of  hospital 
care  it  was  immediately  forthcoming;  but 
they  were  quite  well  and  ablebodied.  Here 
they  had  been  for  more  than  three  weeks  with 
nothing  to  do  except  to  make  their  beds  and 
keep  the  ward  in  order.  This  is  only  an  ex- 
treme instance  of  the  refuge  life  from  which 
it  is  obviously  desirable  to  distribute  the 
refugees  into  houses  or  tenements  as  soon  as 
they  can  find  suitable  employment  and  a 
place  to  live  selected  with  reference  to  their 
employment  and  other  considerations  which 
should  naturally  be  taken  into  account. 

Conditions  in 
Tenements 

"Of  course  the  worse  conditions  are  not  to 
be  found  in  the  refuges,  but  in  overcrowded 
rooms  in  private  tenements  or  in  old  and 
filthy  hotels.  We  have  frequently  seen  eight 
or  ten,  and  in  once  instance  as  many  as  fifteen, 
persons  in  a  single  living-room,  and  it  is  an 
urgent  part  of  the  housing  problem  to  enable 
such  families  to  move  from  their  congested 
and  unsanitary  "furnished"  rooms  into  decent 
dwellings.  We  must  bear  in  mind  that  the 
refugee  families  have  in  many  instances  been 
accustomed  to  very  much  higher  standards  of 
living  than  those  even  of  the  self-supporting 
working  people  in  the  communities  where 
they  now  are.  Many  of  them  own  property 
and  all  of  them  household  goods  which  they 
have  had  to  leave  behind.  They  are  in  the 
position  of  people  who  have  lost  everything 
by  a  fire  or  a  flood.  They  are  not  in  danger  of 
being  injured  by  prompt  and  generous  as- 
sistance in  such  an  emergency. 

"They  are  in  danger  of  demoralization  from 
being  left  in  their  destitute  condition  without 
employment,  without  the  privacy  and  whole- 
some atmosphere  of  family  life,  and  without 
the  social  environment'of  the  neighborhood, 
to  which  they  have  been  accustomed.  The 
best  form  of  relief,  therefore,  would  seem  to 
be  assistance  with  furniture  such  as  would 
enable  them  to  take  suitable  accommodations 
in  a  place  whereby  their  own  labor,  supple- 


[26] 


mented  by  the  government  allowances,  they 
can  become  self-supporting.  To  make  good 
some  part  of  their  war  losses  in  this  way, 
would  be  analogous  to  social  insurance. 

Cost  of 
Refurnishing 

"Various  estimates  made  for  us  by  practical 
people  have  put  the  cost  of  supplying  beds, 
tables,  chairs,  cooking  utensils,  etc.,  at  from 
two  hundred  and  fifty  to  five  hundred  lire  per 
family.  In  two  cities,  Naples  and  Palermo, 
we  appropriated  fifty  thousand  lire  each  to  be 
used  in  this  way  in  aiding  refugees  to  become 
established  in  their  own  homes.  We  think 
that  some  such  work  as  this  should  be  de- 
veloped in  every  community  in  which  the 
refugees  are  likely  to  remain.  In  some 
localities  an  intermediate  step  is  necessary — 
from  ■congregate  shelters,  cheap  hotels  and 
barracks  in  the  neighborhood  of  stations  into 
better  class  hotels  or  other  buildings. 

"While  there  is  some  objection,  it  does  im- 
prove immediate  conditions  and  as  carried  on 
by  an  active  committee  of  hotel  men  in 
Naples  the  considerations  in  favor  of  it  are 
convincing.  Appreciation  should  be  ex- 
pressed of  the  action  of  the  American  Radiator 
Company  in  Milan  in  helping  to  meet  the 
need  for  beds  for  refugees  by  turning  a  part 
of  its  factory  in  Brescia  into  a  furniture 
factory  for  this  purpose. 

VI 

The  Problem 

of  Unemployment 

IN  general,  the  housing  problem  is  closely 
associated  with  that  of  employment, 
which  has  thus  far  received  compara- 
tively little  attention.  We  have  referred  to 
the  Venetian  plan  of  holding  groups  of  workers 
together  and  moving  the  industrial  unit  as  a 
whole.  In  several  communities  work-rooms 
have  been  established  ranging  from  very  in- 
formal attempts  to  enable  women  to  make  the 
clothing  for  their  own  families  to  the  large  and 
well  equipped  factory  in  Rome  conducted  un- 
der the  auspices  of  the  Roma  Committee,  to 
which  the  Red  Cross  contribution  of  1,000,- 
000  lire  was  made. 


"In  connection  with  such  workrooms,  or 
even  independently  of  them,  where  women 
are  regularly  employed,  there  have  been 
established  in  some  instances  day  nurseries  or 
maternal  schools,  where  young  children  are 
cared  for  during  the  working  hours.  All  such 
plans  give  rise  to  the  familiar  problem  as  to 
whether  women  should  not  be  aided  to  remain 
with  their  own  children  rather  than  helped  by 
means  of  such  agencies  for  the  care  of  their 
children. 

".\  special  question  arises  with  the  refugees 
as  to  whether  the  governmental  subsidy 
should  be  discontinued  when  wages  are  earned. 
We  are  informed  that  while  some  latitude  is 
given  prefects  in  this  regard,  it  is  the  general 
policy  to  continue  one-half  the  subsidy  after 
the  refugee  has  taken  employment.  We  have 
m  two  cities  given  money  to  aid  in  maintain- 
ing workrooms. 

Finding  Work 
for  Refugees 

"In  a  few  instances  as  at  Milan  and 
Turin,  employment  agencies,  official'  or 
voluntary,  have  been  attempting  to  find  work 
for  refugees  and  probably  a  great  deal  more 
has  been  done  in  this  direction  than  was 
brought  to  our  attention.  We  were  informed 
at  Messina  that  inquiries  had  been  set  on  foot 
by  the  prefect  among  the  various  towns  of 
his  province,  which  would  enable  the  refugee 
population  to  be  distributed  in  accordance 
with  opportunities  for  suitable  employment. 

"From  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  in 
Rome  it  was  learned  that  this  whole  subject, 
which  was  necessarily  ignored  during  the 
first  great  rush  of  refugees,  is  now  receiving 
serious  consideration,  and  that  the  ministry 
is  relying  on  the  prefects  to  organize  local 
employment  agencies  or  other  means  of  plac- 
ing people  according  to  their  aptitudes  and 
experience.  An  inter-ministerial  advisory 
committee  has  been  appointed,  but  as  yet  no 
national  scheme  for  dealing  adequately  with 
the  subject  has  been  put  in  operation.  If 
some  plan  could  be  worked  out  by  which  the 
American  Red  Cross  could  cooperate  in 
hastening  such  an  organization,  this  would,  in 
our  opinion,  be  a  very  wise  and  appropriate 
use  of  our  funds. 


Moral 

Hazards 

"Still  another  problem  to  which  our  at- 
tention has  been  called  in  more  than  one 
community  is  the  moral  hazard  to  young 
girls  arising  from  the  enforced  movement  of 
population.  Attractive  young  girls  from 
country  districts  in  the  far  north  are  to  be 
found  in  the  streets  of  Naples,  exposed  to  the 
dangers  to  which  they  are  wholly  unac- 
customed and  against  which  they  have  not 
been  protected  by  their  education  or  their 
previous  experiences  of  life. 

"Not  only  ordinary  dangers  inevitably  re- 
sulting from  separation  from  their  kindred 
and  friends  and  the  safeguards  of  their  own 
home  neighborhoods,  but  the  actual  menace 
of  the  white  slave  traffic  must  be  taken  into 
account.  We  learn  that  a  committee  of 
,  Italian  women  has  been  formed  in  Naples  for 
the  protection  of  these  refugee  girls,  and  in 
Palermo  we  gave  1,000  lire  to  aid  in  the  in- 
stallation of  a  building  formerly  used  as  a 
monastery,  which  has  been  taken  for  a  home 
for  orphan  refugee  girls  of  from  12  to  18  years 
of  age.  It  is  earnestly  to  be  hoped  that  some 
American  women  may  see  their  way  to  an 
active  participation  in  this  movement,  either 
by  committees  formed  especially  for  this 
purpose  or  through  some  e.\isting  organi- 
zation. 

The  Families 
of  Soldiers 

"Because  of  the  limits  of  our  time  and  be- 
cause of  the  prominence  at  the  present 
moment  of  the  refugee  problem,  we  have 
given  only  incidental  consideration  to  the 
question  of  assisting  the  families  of  soldiers 
or  to  that  of  aiding  other  civilian  victims  of 
the  war,  such  as  the  widows  and  orphans  of 
soldiers,  and  soldiers  disabled  by  wounds  or 
discharged  because  of  tuberculosis  or  other 
disease. 

"These  needs  exist  and  it  is  desirable  that 
the  American  Red  Cross  should  help  meet 
them.  Fundamental  in  all  of  these  problems 
is  the  amount  of  the  allowance  made  by  the 
government  to  soldiers  actively  in  service,  to 
discharged  soldiers,  to  the  families  of  soldiers 
and  to  refugees.   With  a  scarcity  of  food  and 


fuel  and  the  constantly  increasing  cost  of 
both,  we  received  frequent  suggestions  that 
Red  Cross  funds  be  used  to  supplement  them. 
Obviously,  however,  neither  the  Red  Cross 
nor  any  other  private  agency  can  undertake 
to  make  good  the  shortages  in  income  and 
food  supply  of  a  nation.  Soldiers'  families 
and  refugees — and  for  the  most  part  refugees 
belong  to  the  families  of  soldiers — make  up  a 
large  part  of  the  population  of  Italy. 

The  Need  of 
Food  and  Fuel 

"If  we  were  permitted  to  make  only  a 
single  recommendation  (in  the  hope  that  it 
would  be  adopted)  this  would  be  that  the 
American  Red  Cross  should  use  its  utmost 
influence  to  secure  the  importation  of  food 
into  Italy  during  the  next  few  weeks  and 
months.  Fuel  is  also  needed  but  above  all 
wheat  and  corn,  corn  meal  being  especially 
acceptable  in  large  part  of  Italy. 

"The  food  supply  is  short  for  the  whole 
population,  but  the  refugees,  whose  needs  we 
have  been  asked  to  investigate,  are  naturally 
at  the  very  margin  and  their  needs  in  this  re- 
spect may  therefore  be  taken  as  the  ultimate 
need  of  the  country.  We  have  frequently 
been  told  by  Italians  in  responsible  positions 
that  food  is  more  important  in  seeing  Italy 
through  the  present  crisis  than  either  men  or 
munitions  from  America. 

Clothing  is  also  needed,  especially  under- 
clothing of  all  sizes  and  materials  which  can 
be  made  up  into  clothing.  Fuel  is  urgently 
needed — for  cooking  the  meals  of  the  poor  as 
well  as  for  running  trains  and  factories.  But 
the  elementary  food  supplies  should  be  gi\  en 
precedence.  For  the  most  part  these  supplies 
must  of  course  come  through  the  commercial 
and  governmental  channels. 

"We  are  moreover  of  the  opinion  that 
although  the  American  Red  Cross  must  leave 
the  vital  question  of  a  general  food  supply  to 
governmental  and  commercial  agencies,  we 
should  ask  for  the  largest  permissible  allot- 
ment of  cargo  space  for  the  importation  of 
condensed  milk  and  hospital  supplies  (for 
civilian  relief  as  well  as  for  military  hospitals), 
underclothing,  warm  outer  clothing,  shoes 
(all  sizes  for  men,  women  and  children), 


blankets  and  materials  to  be  made  up  into 
underclothing  and  children's  clothes. 

"Such  supplies  as  can  be  imported  or  pur- 
chased in  this  country  will  be  needed,  as  we 
have  indicated,  for  two  main  purposes:  first, 
to  meet  the  acute  needs  during  the  winter 
months  of  refugees  and  other  civilian  families 
in  the  places  where  they  are  living,  insofar  as 
such  needs  cannot  be  met  by  Italian  officials 
and  voluntary  agencies;  and  second,  to  be 
stored  at  carefully  selected  places  in  sufficient 
quantities  to  meet  a  second  emergency  if  it 
should  arise  or  in  assisting  to  restore  refugees 
to  their  homes  in  territory  which  may  be 
reconquered." 

The  Seven  Weeks 

of  the  Emergency  Work 

Inexorable  circumstances  not  only  made 
the  report  of  its  earlier  Red  Cross  commission 
of  inquiry  out  of  date,  but  found  the  Red 
Cross  without  a  field  staff  in  Italy  when  the 
emergency  came  at  the  end  of  October.  By 
the  swift  dispatch  of  trained  men  and  supplies 
from  its  French  organization  and  the  prompt 
volunteering  of  American  residents  in  Italy, 
it  has  recouped  that  situation. 

The  temporary  staff  returns  to  France, 
leaving  the  field  free  to  the  new  permanent 
Red  Cross  Commission  to  Italy,  operating 
under  the  commissioner  for  Europe,  with 
headquarters  in  Paris.  For  in  its  permanent 
organizatibn  the  Red  Cross  has  entered  upon 
what  the  allied  armies  and  governments  have 
seen  the  need  for  and  are  only  now  approach- 
ing— unified  action  along  the  whole  western 
front. 

This  is  not  only  desirable — so  that  the 
relative  needs  of  different  areas  may  be  seen 
in  perspective  and  American  generosity  and 
initiative  applied  where  and  when  they  will 
count  for  most,  but  it  has  been  an  accom- 
plished thing — for  the  seven  weeks  that  have 
elapsed  between  the  coming  of  the  Red  Cross 
emergency  men  to  Rome  in  early  November, 
and  the  coming  in  December  of  the  perma- 
nent commission. 

The  emergent  work  carried  on  in  those 
seven  weeks  has  been  set  down,  the  physical 
relief  and  the  spiritual  reinforcement  which 
hurled  obstacles  at  a  time  when  to  spread  a 


single  blanket  more  in  an  asile  or  stick  up  a 
flag  at  a  station  counted  incalculably.  But 
more  important  underneath  that  emergent 
work  has  gone  forward,  under  the  Commis- 
sioner for  Europe,  the  laying  of  foundations 
for  a  permanent  work,  kindred  and  compar- 
able to  that  in  France. 

A  New 
Staff 

At  the  enil  of  seven  weeks  the  members  of 
the  emergency  commission  to  Italy  turn  over 
to  the  new  staff: — 

A  fabric  of  good- will  and  cordial  relations 
with  the  Italian  Government  and  voluntary 
organizations. 

An  office  administration  and  procedure  for 
cables,  transportation,  passports,  accounts, 
records. 

A  purchasing  service  with  orders  placed  for 
3,000,000  lire  worth  of  supiilies  in  Italy;  300 
tons  of  beans,  rice,  corned  beef  and  con- 
densed milk  enroute  from  Paris;  15,000  tons 
of  shipping  space  in  boats  sailing  from 
America  prior  to  January  1. 

Warehouses  of  50,000  tons  capacity  in 
Rome,  at  the  ports  of  entry,  Genoa  and 
Naples,  and  at  central  points  of  distribution, 
such  as  Florence,  Bologna  and  Rimini. 

Red  Cross  committees  in  Milan  and  Genoa. 

Under  its  Military  Affairs  Department: — 

A  hospital  supply  service  with  warehouses, 
system  of  co-operating  work-rooms  and 
program  for  direct  inspection  service  from 
dressing  stations  to  the  hospitals  for  con- 
valescents. 

Two  hundred  thousand  surgical  dressings 
for  delivery  in  January  through  the  Surgical 
Dressing  Committee. 

Ten  complete  field  hospitals,  gifts  to  the 
Sanita  Militare  and  the  Italian  Red  Cross, 
under  contract  for  delivery  early  in  the  year. 

The  beginning  of  a  gift  service  to  the  men 
in  the  trenches. 

A  program,  based  on  the  study  of  troop 
movement,  for  a  string  of  rest  stations  and 
canteens  at  eight  junction  points  from  the 
front  to  the  straits  of  Messina. 

A  going  canteen  for  Italian  and  Allied 


[29] 


troops  at  (ienoa,  and  a  dormitory,  rest  room 
and  canteen  under  way  at  Milan. 

One  hundred  men  and,  in  conjunction  with 
the  Poets'  Committee,  three  complete  am- 
bulance sections — the  first  units  of  an  Ameri- 
can Red  Cross  Ambulance  Service  for  Italy; 
already  at  work  on  the  Piave. 

A  system  of  nine  regional  districts,  with 
responsible  delegates,  local  stores,  and  excel- 
lent working  relations  with  American  consuls, 
prefects,  local  authorities  and  agencies. 

Canteens,  supplies,  and  working  program 
under  way  for  Red  Cross  cooperation  in  the 
orderly  migration  of  groups  of  Venetian 
civilians  to  the  coast  towns  on  the  Adriatic. 

A  Red  Cross  hospital  and  health  center  of 
fifty  beds,  serving  the  Venetian  colonies  at 
Rimini  and  adjacent  towns;  a  similar  project 
under  way  at  Toarmina  for  the  service  of  the 
refugees  in  Sicily. 

A  Red  Cross  rest  for  refugees,  the  aged. 


sick,  mothers,  etc.,  and  a  popular  kitchen  in 
Milan. 

Storage  centers,  canteen,  and  district 
delegates  placed  for  effective  help  to  refugees 
in  transit  in  case  of  any  further  emergency. 

A  project  for  the  evacuation  of  children,  the 
sick  and  infirm  from  the  immediate  war  zone. 

A  constructive  program  for  refugee  work, 
based  on  French  experience,  covering  such 
factors  as  furniture,  health  work,  employ- 
ment and  protection  through  which  the  Red 
Cross  can  cooperate  in  preventing  the 
crystallization  of  those  abnormal  living  con- 
ditions which  may  be  worse  in  their  con- 
sequences than  the  more  spectacular  ills  of 
the  flight  from  home. 

An  understanding  of  the  food  and  livelihood 
problem,  reaching  its  extreme  in  the  case  of 
refugees  and  soldiers'  families,  and  demand- 
ing the  combined  action  not  only  of  the 
Italian  authorities  and  the  Red  Cross,  but  of 
America  and  the  Allied  Governments. 


130] 


American 
Red  Cross 

Commissioner  for  Europe. 
Grayson  IVI.  P.  Murpliy 

ISince  retired  to  go  into  military  service  under 
General  Pershing,  and  succeeded  by  Maj.  James 
H.  Perkins.) 

Emergency  Organization  for  Italy. 
November  5— December  20,  1917. 
Carl  Taylor,  deputy  commissioner. 
Charles  Carroll,  aid. 

Bernon.S.  Prentice,  director  of  adminis- 
tration. 

A.  H.  Green,  Jr.,  general  manager. 

B.  G.  Smith,  director  department  of  ac- 
counts. 

R.  H.  Sherman,  director  department  of 

stores 
E.  E.  Darr,  secretary. 
Ernest  Meadows,  publicity. 
J.  Forest  Reilly,  assistant  secretary. 

A.  .  P  Carter,  director  purchasing  depart- 
ment. 

Department  of  Military  Affairs. 
H.  B.  Stanton,  director. 

G.  W.  Beadel,  assistant. 
R.  G.  Mather,  secretary. 

B.  M.  Nester,  chief  inspector. 
Nicholas  R.  Rhodes. 
Robertson  Williams,  field  delegate. 

H.  B.  Wilkins. 
Richard  Wallace. 


Myron  C.  Nutting. 
H.  U.  C.  Bowdoin. 
Charles  K.  Wood,  inspector. 
Department  of  Civil  Affairs. 

Edward  Eyre  Hunt,  director,  November  ,5 

December  10. 
Ernest  P.  Bicknell,  director,  December  10 

December  20. 
E.  O.  Bartlett,  assistant  to  director. 
W.  C.  Smallwood,  advisor  to  director. 
Donaldson  Clark,  assistant. 
A.  J.  Akin  (Florence). 
Albert  J.  Chandler  (Milan). 
O.  H.  Sellenings  (Turin). 

G.  F.  Laughlin  (Leghorn). 
Stanley  Lathrop  (Rimini). 

D.  S.  MacLaughlain  (Palermo). 
T.  H.  Mason  (Naples). 
C.  U.  Moore  (Milan). 

H.  W.  Parsons. 

Charles  H.  Williams,  delegate. 
Investigating  Conmiittee  on  Refugees. 
Ernest  Bicknell. 
Edward  T.  Devine. 
Paul  U.  Kellogg. 
Local  Committees. 
Milan: 

North  Winship,  chairman. 
Paul  Allen,  secretary. 
Genoa : 

Paul  Groejean,  chairman. 

U.  J.  Bywater,  secretary  and  treasurer. 


[31] 


{ 


